Puri's iPhone: Cops led up the garden path

GURGAON: A team of Gurgaon police came back empty-handed on Thursday after spending hours in Noida trying to trace the house where the main accused in the multi-crore Citibank scam, Shiv Raj Puri, had claimed to have kept his iPhone.Police sources said that Purikept misleading them and could not identify the house in Sector-11. City policehad told a Gurgaon court on Wednesday that Puri had revealed that he had used aniPhone for sending SMSes to two brokerage firms for investment of a hugesum.He had also told police that the iPhone was with his friend named Pankaj and that he had kept Rs 20 lakh as well in his friend's custody. "But it was a futile exercise. Although earlier he had claimed that he could identify the house if he was taken there, even after taking several rounds he said that he was forgetting the exact location. He seems to be misleading us in the investigation," one of the investigators said. ACP (DLF) Rao Dalbeer Singh said that the accused is a shrewd person.Puri will be producedbefore a city court on Friday as his extended remand ends. Sources said thatpolice would seek further extension of his remand to connect the missing linksin this case.Meanwhile, the Gurgaon court additional sessions judge,Subhash Goyal, rejected the anticipatory bail application of Puri's father,Raghu Raj Puri. Gurgaon police commissioner S S Deswal said, "We will arrest him(Raghu Raj Puri) soon."While opposing the anticipatory bail plea,the public prosecutor said the main accused Puri's father had said that he wasan accomplice in the case. He added that Rs 50 crore of the ill-gotten money wasinvested by Shiv Raj Puri in Norman Martin. Raghu Raj Puri is one of thedirectors in the firm.On the other hand, Sartaj Baswana, counsel forRaghu Raj Puri, argued that the anticipatory bail plea should be granted sincehis client's name was not in the FIR. He also claimed the senior Puri hasnothing to with his son's business.Shiv Raj is accused of luringabout 40 high networth investors (HNIs) and corporate entities to invest inbogus schemes on the promise of unusually high returns and diverted their moneyto stock markets. Police have estimated the transaction to the tune of Rs 400crore. "How much he lost in this is being worked out after collecting data byexperts from the brokerage firms and National and Bombay Stock Exchanges. Onlyafter compilation of data can we come to a conclusion on how much money can berecovered," said a police officer.