Delhi Court discharges SP Gupta, MD of Sunair Hotel Ltd, in criminal case

A Delhi Court has discharged SP Gupta, Managing Director of Sunair Hotels Limited, and another in a criminal case filed in the year 2002, by VLS Finance Limited.

The said matter arises out of long-driven litigation between Sunair Hotels Limited and VLS Finance Limited relating to financial transactions from the MoU executed between the two companies in the year 1995.

In respect of the said case, a chargesheet was filed by Economic Offences Wing (EOW) in the year 2007 under various sections including allegations of forgery of letters written by various MPs to different agencies including SEBI, extortion and blackmail.

The Court of Additional Chief Metropolitan Magistrate Chander Mohan in an order passed on last week said on "this court is of the opinion that a few bits here and a few bits there on which the prosecution relies cannot be held to be adequate for connecting the accused SP Gupta or Pardeep Dhingra to criminal conspiracy."

"Accordingly, prima facie a case under sections 465/471/420 of IPC is made out against accused SH Siddiqui only and accused SP Gupta and Pardeep Dhingra are discharged from the present case", Court said

SP Gupta was represented by Advocate Vijay Aggarwal and Advocate Aashul Agarwal who argued before the Court that no offence has been made out against him and the allegations levelled are false which have been made levelled at the instance of VLS Finance Limited who has tried to merely convert civil disputes into criminal cases.

It was pointed out by Advocate Aggarwal that the whole chargesheet contains vague and bald allegations and no role of SP Gupta has been brought on record to even prima-facie show that he had any role to play in the alleged offence.

It was further argued by Advocate Vijay Aggarwal that falsity of the allegations is clear from the fact that the Chargesheet itself shows that out of 14 letters alleged to be forged, the CFSL Report has given its comment on only 4 letter and moreover, the specimen signature taken from S.P. Gupta as per the CFSL report does not match any of the forged signatures as alleged.

The present FIR was registered on the complaint of TB Gupta, Managing Director of VLS Finance Limited. The allegations in the present case pertain to threats by the accused persons to the employees and officers of complainant company to enter into a settlement and also regarding blackmail, extortion, circulation of false and bogus material and sending complaints against VLS finance by using forged letterheads and signatures of MPs.

After investigation, chargesheet was filed against only accused SP Gupta, Pradeep Dhingra, SH Siddiqui and Giriraj Singh. Accused Giriraj was declared PO. Accused Shashikant Arora and Sudesh Kohli have already expired and proceedings against them abated.

( With inputs from ANI )

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