22 April,2017 08:28 AM IST | | Agencies
A SEBI court yesterday cancelled its non-bailable arrest warrants against Sahara chief Subrata Roy and three of his group firms' directors after they appeared before it in a case filed by the SEBI against them
Subrata Roy
A SEBI court yesterday cancelled its non-bailable arrest warrants against Sahara chief Subrata Roy and three of his group firms' directors after they appeared before it in a case filed by the SEBI against them.
The special SEBI court cancelled the NBWs against them after they furnished fresh bail bonds of R2 lakh each and gave undertakings to the court that they would attend its trial proceeding against them regularly.
The court further decided to frame charges in the SEBI case against Roy and his three group firms' directors - Ravishankar Dubey, Ashok Roy Choudhary and Vandana Bhargava on May 18. SEBI had filed a case against Sahara India Real Estate Corporation, Sahara Housing Investment, their promoter Subrata Roy and the three directors in 2012, alleging that these companies had collected a huge amount of money from investors without listing the securities on the stock exchanges.
As Roy and others had not appeared before the court earlier, non-bailable warrants were issued against them on March 31. The accused had challenged the issuance of NBWs against them in the Bombay high court, which asked them to approach the trial court before May 3 for relief.
According to SEBI, the Sahara Group companies issued 'Optional Fully Convertible Debentures' for public in 2009 under the garb of private placement. This violated the SEBI Act because companies have to list such securities on the stock exchanges which they did not do.
Although the complaint did not specify the amount collected from investors, it is estimated that it worked out to around R24,000 crore, said SEBI lawyer Omprakash Jha.
