By Anand Singh
New Delhi, Aug 20 (IANS) The Enforcement Directorate, which has got custody of Madhya Pradesh Chief Minister Kamal Nath's nephew Ratul Puri for six days, arrested him on Monday night after questioning him for several hours in a Rs 354-crore bank fraud case, official sources said.
According to highly placed ED sources, Puri had arrived at the agency's office around 6.30 p.m. and was questioned till 8 p.m.
A financial probe agency source said when Puri was being questioned, he tried to mislead the officials by not writing in proper manner.
He said, "Puri was writing in very different manner with a mix of small and big alphabets. But when he complained of bad health and asked for medicines, the official told him to write down the names of medicines. He wrote the names of those medicines properly on a paper slip," the source said.
The source also pointed out that Puri accepted the summons around 10 p.m. after repeated requests from agency officials.
"But after stepping out from the ED office, he tore up the summons and threw it outside the agency's office," the official said, adding they collected the torn pieces of the summons from outside its office and also collected a few pieces of it from Puri's pocket.
"The same torn summon papers and the handwriting samples were produced in the court in a sealed cover by ED counsel Vikas Garg and D.P. Singh," the source said.
He said Garg and Singh explained to the judge how Puri tore up the agency's summons and also used different handwriting.
Garg has handled many cases for the ED during demonetisation.
The source said Puri's counsel Vijay Agarwal in the court also accepted that he had asked his client not to write properly.
"After all this drama at the ED office, Puri was arrested on Monday night at 11.58 p.m. and his mother Nita Puri was informed about his arrest from the agency's landline phone at 12.15 a.m." the source said.
The source said a call was made on the mobile phone of his mother after he gave her number. The source said Puri complained about uneasiness and bad health at night.
"When he complained of uneasiness, he was taken to Ram Manohar Lohia Hospital for examination," he said.
According to the ED source, Puri was the Executive Director of Moser Baer till 2012.
The source said that the Central Bank of India has also alleged that most of the documents attached for the loan by Moser Baer were forged.
The ED arrested Puri after filing a money laundering case under the Prevention of Money Laundering Act (PMLA) against him and others late on Monday night based on the Central Bureau of Investigation's FIR.
The CBI had booked Ratul Puri, his company, his father and Managing Director Deepak Puri, Directors Nita Puri (Ratul's mother and Kamal Nath's sister), Sanjay Jain and Vineet Sharma for alleged criminal conspiracy, cheating, forgery and corruption.
The ED also wants to question Ratul Puri in the Rs 3,600-crore AgustaWestland VVIP chopper deal.
(Anand Singh can be contacted at anand.s@ians.in)
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