NEW DELHI (TIP):
The Supreme Court on March 7 agreed to consider Sahara group’s refund proposal and asked it to brief the market regulator Sebi about it. Sahara also assured the SC that it will deposit a “substantial amount” out of Rs 20,000 crore of investors’ money this month and the rest later. Sahara’s lawyers also sought police custody for Subrata Roy and two others on ground that there were problems in getting access to them in judicial custody. t present, Sahara chief Subrata Roy is lodged in Tihar jail. On March 4, Roy was ordered to remain in custody for a week in Delhi by the Supreme Court which was unhappy that no concrete proposal on the refund of investors’ money was put forward by the company.

Sebi finds large-scale mismatch in Sahara papers

Sebi has come across serious anomalies and a huge number of possibly fictitious investors after analysing truck loads of documents submitted by Sahara to substantiate its claim of over Rs 20,000 crore refunds. To locate genuine investors who may have deposited money with Sahara, the regulator also wants to issue public notices in regional language newspapers and through other avenues, especially in northern and eastern states of the country. Sahara group, whose chief Subrata Roy was on March 4 sent into judicial custody, had deposited Rs 5,120 crore with Sebi after court orders.

It claims to have already refunded all but Rs 2,000 crore in cash directly to investors. The court had ordered refund of over Rs 24,000 crore in August 2012. Sebi has contested Sahara’s direct refund claims. However, Sebi’s analysis of documents submitted by Saharas has thrown up large-scale mismatch – in dates on application forms and redemption vouchers, addresses, names, bond details, among others – in these papers, sources said.

There are numerous instances of one person having hundreds of accounts, one account having multiple beneficiaries, one person with multiple address and one address having tens of individuals. There are some people whose claimed dues spread over multiple accounts run into crores of rupees. Besides, there are thousands of cases where addresses are untraceable, as also cases having innocuous addresses like national highways, and just names of villages, towns or roads, sources said on condition of anonymity.

A large chunk of these details have also been presented before the Supreme Court through written and oral submissions, they said, while adding that there are also cases of payment dates being shown earlier than the voucher dates. The months-long analysis, which was conducted with the help of hundreds of scanners, computers and a robotic system installed at a huge warehouse in suburbs of Mumbai by hundreds of people, began early last year soon after Saharas delivered more than 100 trucks full of cartons containing documents.