New Delhi, 30 October (H.S.): A Delhi court has refused to substantially alter the charges framed against former Dewan Housing Finance Limited (DHFL) chairman and managing director Kapil Wadhawan, former director Dheeraj Wadhawan, businessman Ajay Ramesh Nawandar and others in an alleged bank fraud case.

Special Judge Sanjeev Kumar Malhotra of the Rouse Avenue Court dismissed the Central Bureau of Investigation’s (CBI) plea seeking amendments to the charges, observing that a court cannot review its own order framing charges, except to correct clerical or typographical errors.

The court held that the scope for making changes to an order framing charges was limited to rectifying such inadvertent errors and did not extend to a substantive reconsideration of the charges already decided.

Kapil Wadhawan, Dheeraj Wadhawan, Nawandar and others are accused in a bank fraud case registered by the CBI in June 2022. They allegedly defrauded a consortium of 17 banks of approximately Rs 34,000 crore.

According to the CBI, the case was among the largest banking loan frauds in the country. The agency filed a 55,000-page charge sheet on October 15, 2022, which was subsequently taken cognisance of by the court.

The accused had challenged the charge sheet, contending that it was incomplete under Section 173 of the Code of Criminal Procedure.

The CBI arrested Kapil Wadhawan and Dheeraj Wadhawan in July 2022. According to the agency’s allegations, DHFL had obtained loans amounting to approximately Rs 42,000 crore from a consortium of 17 banks, including Union Bank of India, and allegedly diverted the funds unlawfully to other companies.

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Hindusthan Samachar / Jun Sarkar