Mumbai: Accepting arguments that a civil dispute appears prima facie to have been given a criminal colour, Bombay high court on Thursday granted bail to a former head of an international school who had been behind bars since Oct 2023. The accused, Surekha Garde, was arrested in a case filed by an investor who alleged that he had been cheated and defrauded.
The complainant also invoked provisions of Maharashtra Protection of Interest of Depositors (In Financial Establishments) Act against her in 2023 when he registered an FIR at Kasarvadavli police station in Thane.
Garde was released from jail on Saturday.
The complainant, Amot Goyal, said that he had deposited about Rs 70 lakh in 2020-21 in an investment venture, hoping to receive robust returns in interest. The money was dealt with by her husband, who later died, the court noted. Money was received by Garde and her husband in six separately extended loan agreements.
Prosecutor S A Karmakar said the money was invested by the couple in the husband’s investment venture, and depositors were offered 8.5-15% returns every month. The prosecution said Garde claimed to the Goyals that she was the head in the school where their son studied and induced them into investing funds in her husband’s business. After initially paying high returns, such payments later stopped, said the complaint.
Arguing for her bail before Justice Milind Jadhav, Garde’s lawyer, Ganesh Sovani, said that over Rs 37 lakh had already been paid so far to the complainant on the Rs 70-lakh given on loan, to which there was an MoU executed between parties. Sovani said the transactions are civil in nature and that Goyal and his wife initiated cheque bouncing cases too before a magistrate when they bounced earlier. He argued there could not be a separate criminal case now for the same cause.
Advocate Surabh Butala for Goyal, HC said, “fairly” admitted that the complaint did not disclose the seven private summary criminal cases for the same cause of action but said “there are other investors who have also not received their returns”.
Justice Jadhav observed that he accepted Sovani’s submissions for bail on the grounds that the transaction between the parties was civil in nature based on documentary evidence—the loan agreement, the MoU, the cheques given—but it was given a criminal flavour, and since cheque bouncing cases were invoked, there would be double jeopardy.
The court said the husband, not Garde, had full control of dealing with the money invested. She is a highly educated woman and has been in jail “due to her indirect participation, which was to allow her husband to use her bank account for doing his business”, it said. HC said thus, Garde’s continued custody is unwarranted and granted her bail on a bond of Rs 25,000.