Court orders house arrest of 2 held for cheating as remand hearing goes beyond working hours

Chhatrapati Sambhajinagar, Jun 13 (PTI) A court in Maharashtra on Thursday sent two top officials of a cooperative credit society at Beed district, held in a cheating case, to "house arrest" till Friday after it couldn't pass an order on a plea for their police custody extension as arguments lasted beyond working hours.

Additionally, the court in Beed district couldn't decide on the remand plea as prosecution sought time to submit its response to multiple applications filed by the accused, who held senior positions at the Dnyanradha Cooperative Multi-State Credit Society.

Cooperative credit society chairman Suresh Kute and joint director Ashish Patodekar were arrested by the Beed police from Hinjawadi near Pune city last week for allegedly cheating depositors.

As per the court order on house confinement, they will be kept at Kute's home in Beed district till Friday when hearing on the plea will resume.

The duo was produced before Additional Sessions Judge, Majalgaon, B G Dharmadhikari at the end of their previous remand on Thursday.

Police sought extension of their remand by another seven days for further probe into the matter.

However, defence advocates Aman Kacheria and Rahul Agarwal opposed the plea, saying the arrest of their clients was illegal and bad in law.

The advocates claimed the police action was in violation of Supreme Court guidelines as the investigating officer arrested the accused without stating reasons and/or grounds for doing so.

Hence, the duo's custody was a violation of their fundamental rights enshrined in the Constitution. Therefore, the present remand (extension) application deserves to be rejected and the accused be released forthwith, the lawyers argued.

Besides opposing the remand extension plea, during the hearing, the advocates for the accused submitted before the court as many as five applications.

The court noted that arguments on the application began at about 12.30 pm and lasted till 6.45 pm, excluding the period of recess.

At this stage, the additional public prosecutor filed his say to one of the five applications and sought time to respond to the remaining ones, a court order said.

According to the prosecutor, he will have to go through all applications and citations referred to on behalf of the accused and the same would require time.

He insisted on keeping the matter for Friday and till then sought police custody of the accused.

However, the defence lawyers submitted they had no objection to giving time to the prosecution to file their say, but vehemently objected to grant of custody of the accused to police.

Their contention was that arrest of the accused itself was challenged on the ground of its illegality and hence they cannot be remanded to police or judicial custody.

At most the accused can be remanded to house arrest, they said, and referred to a Supreme Court' order to drive home their point.

The court, after considering all facts and circumstances, and that it is already 7 pm (the time of passing the order) and it will be "just and proper" to send the accused to house arrest till June 14.

The duo was booked after a farmer lodged a complaint with the Majalgaon police in Beed district claiming he had a fixed deposit of around Rs 3.5 lakh with the credit society but did not get his money back on maturity. PTI AVI RSY