Investors who lost heavily in Dewan Housing Finance Ltd (DHFL) had thought that Kapil and Dheeraj Wadhawan, promoters of the failed finance company DHFL, were being held in Taloja jail. For the past 15 months, it transpires that they have been cosily ensconced in the Kokilaben Dhirubhai Ambani hospital under the pretext of a minor ailment such as a sleep disorder.
The Wadhawans were jailed under the Prevention of Money Laundering Act (PMLA), for running a criminal operation of creating thousands of fake accounts and fake loans (the infamous Bandra Books) and causing a loss of Rs40,000 crore. But they could easily game the system and be in a hospital.
This isn’t the first time they have done so. Two years ago, in April 2020, during the strict lockdown ordered during the coronavirus pandemic, 23 members of the Wadhawan family, were permitted to defy restrictions and drive from Mumbai to Mahabaleshwar in order to ‘chill’. The Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) had said they were ‘absconding’ at that time. How did they drive through sealed areas across Maharashtra?
The principal secretary (special), home department, Amitabh Gupta, had issued a letter on his letterhead allowing them to. When the news came out, Anil Deshmukh, the then home minister in Maharashtra ordered an inquiry and promised stringent action against Mr Gupta, who claimed to have acted on “humanitarian grounds”. What was the “strict” action? He was let off in the inquiry and promoted as Pune police…
