Pune: Police have filed a case of criminal conspiracy, creating false records and forgery, among other charges, against IPS officer Bhagyashree Navtake in relation to the probe into the alleged Rs 1,200-crore economic fraud by Jalgaon-based Bhaichand Hirachand Raisoni (BHR) cooperative credit society, which also had an office in the city. Several investors across the state said they were cheated by the society that had promised handsome returns. After the fraud came to light, state govt had put the society under a liquidator.
It is alleged that under the liquidator, there was misappropriation of Rs 160 crore. Navtake — now posted as commandant of State Reserve Police Force in Chandrapur — was then deputy commissioner of police (DCP), economic offence and cyber, with the Pune police, and headed an SIT to investigate the fraud. She is accused of registering three back-to-back cases within 24 hours on Nov 15, 2020, against some of the society's office-bearers with the Deccan, Alandi and Shikrapur police stations.
When contacted, Navtake told TOI, "I am bound by my service rules and cannot comment on the issue for now." Among other things, Navtake is accused of going beyond her jurisdiction to ensure registration of cases, pressuring police officials to register these cases, making selective arrests, submitting selective chargesheets, tampering with office notes and directions, and engaging a special public prosecutor having conflict of interest as he had in the past represented one of the accused in the main fraud case. On Tuesday, the Bund Garden police registered the FIR based on a complaint by DCP (crime) Nikhil Pingale following the directives from the state home department and the state director general of police office.
This was after the state criminal investigation department (CID) had conducted an internal probe into the matter and submitted a report to the state. Two office-bearers of the credit society had earlier approached the state govt, claiming irregularities in the registration of the three cases and subsequent investigations. This had prompted the CID probe.
Pune police commissioner Amitesh Kumar told TOI on Wednesday, "The case has been filed but it is yet to be decided as to whether the CID or the Pune police will conduct further investigation." Earlier, the CID had recorded statements of senior officers from the Pune city police, Pimpri Chinchwad, and Pune rural police, apart from Navtake. The FIR registered on Tuesday stated that the statements by senior officers from the three police units showed how wrongly the cases were registered.
Also, how searches were carried out in Jalgaon and large numbers of documents were seized. The preliminary investigation prior to the registration of the three cases was also not conducted properly, the FIR stated. In fact, two of the complainants in the three cases were not even present at the police stations concerned when the FIRs were registered.
Navtake and her team neglected the standard procedure for registration of cases and also neglected the distress value of the society's properties, Tuesday's FIR further said. The FIR referred to the Bombay high court's observation in a petition related to the matter that there were lacunae such as a different laptop was shown as seized instead of the real seizure. The senior officers had made notings on the development of the cases but these notings were changed during the investigation.
The explanations and directions made by the economic offences wing (EOW) while investigating these three cases had discrepancies, it said. BOX The EOW had arrested 20 people in 2020 and 2021 for cheating investors in 2015-16. Those arrested included a Jalgaon-based developer, who is the prime suspect in the fraud.
Office-bearers of the BHR cooperative society stole data of the investors and settled the loans against some cheap amount and caused huge losses to the society. The accused also launched a website to auction the society's properties. They illegally controlled the tendering and purchased more than six properties.
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