Agrawal skips court, slapped with NBW

Nagpur: Despite an ultimatum by the trial court, alleged kingpin of Nagpur district central cooperative bank (NDCCB) scam, Sanjay Agrawal, failed to appear on Thursday, and the judge issued a non-bailable warrant (NBW) against him.Second additional chief judicial magistrate J V Pekhale-Purkar directed the criminal investigation department, Nagpur, to execute the warrant. The next hearing is scheduled for February 1, which means Agrawal who’s out on bail will have to be arrested and produced in court or he can surrender.However, the daily order of the case uploaded in the court website also mentions of a report received from Lajpore Central Prison in Surat. The order does not spell out details of the prison report and mentions issuance of NBW. Apart from the case in Nagpur, he is accused of fraud in multiple banks in different states.Rs 150cr from NDCCB was routed to Agrawal’s broking firm, Home Trade Limited, for buying government securities, which was allegedly embezzled. Former chairman of the bank, Sunil Kedar and five other accused, have been convicted in the case, but a decision on Agrawal is still pending. Since the trial against Agrawal has not begun as charges are yet to be framed. As per law, the presence of the accused is needed to frame charges.On Thursday, Sanjay Agrawal’s name was called out thrice in court, but he did not turn up. The judge then issued a non bailable warrant against him.Meanwhile, the sessions court rejected the bail pleas of five others — Ketan Seth, Nandkishore Trivedi, Amit Verma, Subodh Bhandari and Ashok Choudhary. Three of them — Seth, Trivedi and Verma — ran brokerage firms through which the bank took funds and routed to Home Trade. Subodh Bhandari was a chartered accountant engaged by Home Trade and Choudhary was NDCCB’s general manager, said defence lawyer Girish Purohit.