Ahmedabad: The Gujarat high court quashed a lower court’s order directing an investigation into bribery charges against a former chief manager of Bank of Baroda’s Chandkheda branch. The court observed that the banker had been accused of corruption by a bank fraud accused as an “arm-twisting” tactic to avoid a criminal case against him.Bank manager Rameshchandra Saroj filed a complaint in 2015 against Harvindersingh Virdhi, proprietor of S P Engineering, who had mortgaged his property to obtain a loan from the bank. During an audit, it was revealed that Virdhi had allegedly mortgaged the same property with Allahabad Bank as well.Virdhi was arrested after a fraud complaint was registered against him. He later sought bail from a Gandhinagar sessions court. During the bail hearing, he told the court that Saroj had demanded Rs 2 lakh as a bribe to refrain from filing a complaint against him for the alleged bank fraud. In May 2016, the court ordered the police to investigate the allegation made by Virdhi, who also submitted certain material to substantiate his claim.Facing criminal prosecution following the sessions court’s order, Saroj approached the high court. His advocate, Jeet Bhatt, submitted that the sessions court had exceeded its jurisdiction by ordering an investigation while hearing a bail application under Section 439 of the CrPC.After hearing the case, Justice M C Tyagi said, “In light of the facts and circumstances of the present case, the allegation made by the accused, Harvindersingh Jogindersingh Virdhi, is nothing but arm-twisting in order to avoid the criminal consequences of fraud committed by him.”The high court quashed the lower court’s directions and stated, “The power of learned sessions judge under Section 439 of CrPC is very limited to enlarge the accused on bail or reject the application for granting bail but does not extend to issue direction to investigating officer to launch the prosecution on the basis of the material provided by the accused at the time of hearing the bail application.”
