NEW DELHI, Sept 9:
An accused, evading the law and declared a proclaimed offender, cannot be accorded the benefit of anticipatory bail, the Delhi High Court has ruled.
“Normally, when the accused is ‘absconding’ and has been declared a ‘proclaimed offender’, there is no question of granting anticipatory bail,” said Justice Manmohan.
The court, citing various Supreme Court judgements, said such a relief cannot be not given to an absconding accused who has been avoiding arrest and has been declared a proclaimed offender under the Criminal Procedure Code. The court made the remarks while dismissing the anticipatory bail plea of one S L Maloo, a former director of five private firms, in a cheating case.
Maloo, who was once a director of five firms including complainant M/s Universal Finance Traders Ltd, had taken a loan of Rs one crore from creditor Sudesh Madhok after depositing title deed of a flat located at Tolstoy Marg here, the FIR said.
The accused then again tried to encash the property by “fraudulently transferring ownership rights” of the flat to complainant Universal Finance Traders Ltd, it said. The complainant firm was later taken over by new management in 2007 through a share purchase agreement under a belief that the flat belonged to the firm, the FIR said.
The complainant firm, which was told that the original title deeds were missing, lodged the FIR after it came to know that the accused had offered to sell the flat to repay the loan of Rs one crore to creditor Madhok. Madhok had filed a recovery suit against Maloo in the High Court where he offered to sell the flat to repay the debt.
The complainant firm, which intervened in the recovery suit to get the sale of flat stalled, was asked by the High Court to furnish a bank guarantee of Rs 2.25 crore to get the relief.
During the hearing on the bail plea of Maloo, Delhi police told the court that a fraud was played by the accused while transferring the property to the complainant firm.
“The investigation has revealed that Notary Public Mahavir Singh who is alleged to have notarized the said agreement to sell on July, 29, 1998, had expired on May 20, 1997 and the stamp vendor from whom the stamp paper for the July, 1998 had been purchased, did not exist,” police said.
The flat was shown in the balance sheet of Universal Finance Traders Ltd in 2006, it said. (PTI)
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