The police's closure report in a case involving an alleged Rs 25,000 crore scam at the Maharashtra State Cooperative Bank (MSCB) has been approved by a Mumbai court.
Former deputy chief minister Ajit Pawar, who had been a director of one of the district banks, his wife Sunetra Pawar, and other others have been exonerated in the case, according to the closing report of the police's Economic Offenses Wing (EOW).
The new Maharashtra Deputy Chief Minister is Sunetra Pawar.
The EOW informed the special court that the purported case contained no criminal offenses. Additionally, the investigators reported that they did not discover any anomalies in the loan and recovery approval processes.The court rejected the campaigners' appeal for an investigation into the purported swindle after approving the closure report.
A month after Ajit Pawar lost his life in a plane crash in Baramati, Maharashtra, the closure report was accepted.
Protest petitions against the closure report submitted by activist Anna Hazare and others were denied by special judge Mahesh Jadhav.
We are awaiting the court's comprehensive order.
Loans made by district and cooperative banks to cooperative sugar plants, spinning mills, and other organizations—allegedly without adhering to regulations—are connected to the alleged scheme. The leading cooperative bank in Maharashtra is the MSCB.The Bombay High Court ordered the investigation to start in 2019. In addition to Pawar, who was a director of one of the district banks at the time, government officials, MSCB directors and officials at the time, and others were mentioned in the first information report (FIR).
The EOW first claimed that errors in loan disbursement caused the state to lose Rs 25,000 crore between January 2007 and December 2017. Since 2020, the case has taken many different turns.
The EOW submitted a closure report during the Maha Vikas Aghadi (MVA) administration, while Ajit Pawar served as finance minister, indicating that no criminal offenses had been found.