Thursday Titbits

A) The Economic Offence Wing  (EOW)of the govt of India now a days is after the Banking Sectors top Executives, and the main charges  against these Executives are helping some industrialists with dubious loans, getting undue favours and having disproportionate income /assets in comparison to known source of income. Few of top Executive who are affected are:

1. Ravindra Marathe- Chairman, Bank of Maharashtra. He has been arrested in the case of  loan of Rs 3,000 Cr granted to DS Kulkarni group of Pune, which has been proven as dubious loan as DS Kulkarni group is almost bankrupt.
2. RK Dubey- Chairman & Managing Director of Canara Bank. A case has been filed against him for sanctioning dubious loan of Rs 68 Cr.
3. Yogesh Agarwal-Chairman IDBI Bank. He has been arrested in the case Vijay Mallaya’s loan defaults.
4. Usha Anantsubramaniam- Ex CEO of Punjab National Bank. She has been charge sheeted in the case involving Nirav Modi dubious means of taking finance from bank.
5. Archana Bhargav- Chairparson & Managing Director of United Bank of India. Case is filed against her for having assets of  worth Rs 3.6 Cr for which she has no explanation.
6. A Kaul- Chairman & Managing Director of United Commercial (UCO) Bank. The case against him is, that he sanctioned a loan of Rs  621 Cr to Ira Engineering Infrastructure, which has been proven as dubious loan with no chance of recovery.
7. Chanda Kochar-  CEO of ICICI Bank. Case against her is that Videocon avail loans from ICICI Bank, and Managing Director of Videocon then invested in her husband’s company. This matter became open when Videocon started defaulting on loans.
8. Kishore Kharat, Melvin Rego and MS Raghvan of IDBI bank. They have been charge sheeted in the case of  default of Rs 600 Cr loan, given to Aircel.

These are some of the cases , which have come out in the open. may be because of the present govt is acting tough with the loan defaulters, as the Non Performing Assets (NPA) of  all the multi sector and private banks have touched a very high figure, and which is affecting the economical growth. It looks like that the earlier regime was very lax in auditing the banks or  may be some top politicians must have been involved in pressurising the bank executive for sanctioning the loans to some dubious persons or companies. Otherwise how it is possible that person like Nirav Modi and Vijay Mallaya were always getting financial assistance from the bank, although it was in open that their companies are not doing well. So like they say in Hindi ” Daal Mein Kuch Kala Hai”.

B) One other news item which caught my eye was that the case of a young woman, who is 21 weeks pregnant and wanted to abort her child. The case is she wanted to finish her education and get the job, in the mean while she got married under family pressure. As she was suffering from epilepsy, so could not take contraceptive pills and her husband refused to use condoms. Her gynecologist issued a statement that, woman had registered a case of domestic violence against her husband, and informed that her in laws did not allow her to complete the education, and kept her nearly in confinement till she went beyond 20 weeks of pregnancy. The gynecologist further said she came to him for abortion but as the pregnancy was beyond the permissible limit of 20 weeks for abortion, he refused. The said woman immediately approached the  Bombay High Court through her lawyer. But the HC refused to entertain her plea stating that she is married and the foetus is having no abnormality and hence the case does not qualify for exception.

First thing which came to my mind was, why this woman did not take any help of outsider when she was kept , as she says, in near confinement and secondly why her lawyer never insisted in court that her husband and  in laws should be called in the court to testify, just because she was 21 weeks pregnant, and law does not permit abortion 20 weeks of pregnancy and hence her plea was turned down without looking into the merit of this case. My view is that she should have been given a fair hearing and HC should not have turned down her plea without proper hearing.

So friends what are your reaction in both the above mentioned cases.

Awaiting your views/comments/feed backs.