Court accepts closure report in Maharashtra State Co-operative Bank case involving Ajit Pawar

Mumbai, Feb 27 (PTI) A court here on Friday accepted the closure report submitted by the city police's Economic Offences Wing (EOW) in the case related to an alleged Rs 25,000 crore scam at the Maharashtra State Cooperative Bank (MSCB), giving a clean chit to late Ajit Pawar and other accused.

The court's acceptance of the report came nearly a month after Pawar, then deputy chief minister of Maharashtra, died in a plane crash in Baramati.

Mahesh Jadhav, special judge for cases involving MPs and MLAs, accepted the `C-Summary' report filed by the EOW stating that no criminal case was made out.

The court also rejected protest petitions filed by activist Anna Hazare and others challenging the closure report.

The alleged scam pertained to disbursal of loans to cooperative sugar factories, spinning mills and other entities by district and cooperative banks without following norms. The MSCB is Maharashtra's apex cooperative bank.

The probe began in 2019 following directives from the Bombay High Court.

Besides Pawar, who was then a director of one of the district banks, the First Information Report named government officials, the then directors and officials of the MSCB, and others.

The state exchequer suffered losses of Rs 25,000 crore between January 2007 to December 2017 due to irregularities in disbursal of loans, the EOW alleged.

The case saw multiple twists since 2020. During the Maha Vikas Aghadi (MVA) government (in which Ajit Pawar was the finance minister) the EOW filed a closure report stating that no criminal offence was made out.

However, after the change of government in 2022, the probe agency sought to reopen the case. But in January 2024, months after Ajit Pawar split the Nationalist Congress Party and joined the ruling alliance, the agency once again filed a closure report. PTI SP KRK