(MENAFN- Live Mint) The Delhi High Court has ordered the cancellation of a lookout circular (LOC) issued against BharatPe's co-founder Ashneer Grover and his wife Madhuri Jain Grover, noting that the FIR lodged against them over allegations of cheating and forgery has been quashed, newswire PTI reported on Tuesday, November 12.
Justice Sanjeev Narula passed the order on Monday, November 11, after the court was informed that another bench of the high court quashed the FIR on the same day.
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“Although the copy of the order (quashing the FIR) is not available as of now, the aforenoted fact is not disputed by the counsel for the parties. In light of the fact that the underlying FIR has been quashed, the LOC issued by respondent No. 3 (Bureau of Immigration), in the opinion of the court, will not survive,” Justice Narula said, according to the agency.
The Bureau of Immigration issued the lookout circular at the instance of Delhi Police's Economic Offences Wing (EOW) in view of the investigation against the Grovers in the cheating and forgery FIR.
The Grovers sought the quashing of the FIRs based on the recent settlement of disputes with the fintech company.
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“Accordingly, the present petitions are disposed of with a direction to the respondents to cancel the LOC against the petitioners in their records,” the court noted, as per the report.
Earlier, the Grovers claimed they were informed about the LOC issued against them for the first time when they were detained at Delhi's international airport on November 16, 2023, when they were scheduled to travel to the US. After being detained they were informed that the LOC was operational from November 6, 2023.
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Economic Offences Wing of Delhi Police filed an FIR against Grover, his wife Madhuri, and others under eight sections of the Indian Penal Code, which covered criminal breach of trust, cheating and dishonesty, forgery, and using forged documents as genuine for an alleged ₹81 crore fraud after a complaint was lodged by the fintech platform BharatPe, as per the report.
BharatPe claimed that Grover and his family caused damages of almost ₹81.3 crore through illegitimate payments to bogus human resource consultants, inflated and undue payments through pass-through vendors connected to the accused, sham transactions in input tax credit and payment of penalty to GST authorities, illegal payment to travel agencies, forged invoices by Madhuri, and destruction of evidence, reported the agency.
Ashneer Grover resigned as the chief executive officer of BharatPe in March 2022. Madhuri was the head of controls at BharatPe before she was fired in 2022 after a forensic audit revealed several irregularities.
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