Delhi court acquits six in bank loan fraud case

A Delhi court has acquitted six people in a case related to alleged irregularities in the sanction and disbursement of housing loans by Allahabad Bank’s Wazirpur branch more than two decades ago.

Special Judge Jyoti Kler gave the benefit of doubt to the accused, Rajan Arora, his wife Sunita Arora, Vinay Kumar Goel, his wife Vaibhavi Goel, and two others, Arvind Goel and Bhushan Dev Chawla, and acquitted them of all charges.

Proceedings against Arvind Goel and Chawla had earlier abated due to their deaths.

In an order dated October 6, the court held that the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) failed to prove charges of criminal conspiracy, cheating, forgery, and corruption beyond reasonable doubt.

The case, registered by the CBI in June 2004, pertained to allegations that former Allahabad Bank officer V K Chibber, then in charge of the bank’s retail banking at Wazirpur, had conspired with private individuals to sanction housing loans on the basis of forged property documents, causing a loss of about Rs 77.6 lakh to the bank.

The accused were borrowers and sellers involved in three loan accounts, sanctioned between May and August 2003 for properties in Delhi’s Shalimar Village and Old Gobindpura.

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The judge noted that the co-accused in the same case were acquitted in 2021 on identical evidence and said there was no ground to take a different view in the present trial.

The court also set aside the charge under IPC Section 174A (non-appearance after proclamation), observing that the accused were not served properly at their actual residential addresses.