Former State Bank of India (SBI) chairman Pratip Choudhary was arrested by the Jaisalmer Police from Delhi on Sunday in connection with a loan scam case. Chaudhary was held on the basis of arrest orders issued by the Chief Judicial Magistrate Court in the case of selling Godawan Group hotel property at a cheap price after declaring it NPA.
According to reports, Pratip Chaudhary was arrested from his residence in Delhi in a case related in the scam of a private hotel in Jaisalmer. It is alleged that the hotel properties of Godawan Group worth about Rs 200 crore was sold for Rs 25 crore by declaring it Non-Performing Asset (NPA). This property, in fact, was seized in lieu of the loan.
According to the police, the Godawan Group had taken a loan of Rs 24 crore from SBI in 2008 for the construction purpose. At that time, another hotel of the group was running smoothly. After that, when the group could not repay the loan amount, the bank seized both the hotels of the group after considering it as a non-performing asset. At that time, the chairman of the bank was Pratip Chaudhary.
The bank then sold both the hotels to a company for Rs 25 crore at a much lower price than the market rate. On this, the hotel group went to court.
Meanwhile, the buyer company took over it in 2016 and when this property was valued in 2017, its market value was found to be Rs 160 crore. At the same time, after retirement, Pratip Chaudhary joined the same company as a director to which this hotel was sold. At present, the value of these hotels is being estimated at Rs 200 crore.
In this case, the CJM Court of Jaisalmer ordered the arrest of Pratip Chaudhary. Arrest warrants were also issued against RK Kapur, SV Venkatakrishnan, Sasi Methadil, Devendra Jain, Tarun and Vijay Kishore Saxena.
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