JOIN USA police team from Chandigarh has taken Menakuru Sukumar Reddy, a former independent director of Deccan Chronicle Holdings Ltd (DCHL), into custody in a cheque bounce case filed by non-banking financial company Religare Finvest Ltd (RFL) on Thursday.
Senior officials from the Chandigarh Police have confirmed that M Sukumar Reddy was produced in the court on Thursday afternoon. Reddy was produced before the Judge, Ashok Kumar, of the Chandigarh district court, according to a Religare representative here. The court granted him bail with a surety of Rs 20 lakh. Sukumar Reddy, who is engaged in real estate and construction business, had been on the board of DCHL since 2003, and resigned along with three other independent directors in December 2012.
A five-member team from the Chandigarh Police was here to serve a non-bailable warrant issued by a Chandigarh district court on the promoters of the DCHL—chairman T Venkatram Reddy, vice-chairman and managing director T Vinayak Ravi Reddy and vice-chairman P K Iyer—and four former directors. Rejecting a plea for exemption, the court ordered them to appear before it on July 30 and issued non-bailable warrants.
This is the second time the Chandigarh Police have visited the city to arrest the promoters of DCHL. Last time, when a two-member team arrived here in March, the promoters had managed to evade arrest.
The DCHL issued two cheques dated July 1, 2012, and two other cheques dated August 1, 2012, amounting to Rs 6 crore in favour of Religare Enterprises Ltd’s lending vertical, RFL. An FIR was filed after the cheques bounced.