Delhi High Court quashes fraud case against Subrata Roy, wife

The Delhi high court has quashed a criminal proceeding against Sahara Group chief Subrata Roy, and his wife Swapna Roy in a six year-old cheating and fraud case.

This relief, however, will not help Roy, who has been in Tihar jail since March 4, 2014 following a supreme court direction after he failed to refund hundreds of investors' money, to come out of jail until he deposits Rs 10,000 crore bail bond amount.

A single judge bench of the Delhi high court quashed the trial court proceedings on a joint petition by the complainant and Roy's company Sahara India Commercial Corporation Ltd that they have reached an out of court settlement.

Citing the apex court's earlier verdicts in different cases, which held that the courts should accept the terms of compromise, Justice Manmohan Singh in a recent order said: "The parties have compromised the matter out of court on receiving the entire pending outstanding amount as full and final settlement to their complete satisfaction. The parties have withdrawn all allegations and counter allegations made against each other. Both parties do not wish to pursue the criminal /civil proceedings filed against each other…."

The court also quashed the summoning order issued by the trial court against the Roy couple and four others in January 2011.

In April 2009, a complaint was filed by Neeraj Pandey and his wife Veena accusing Roy and his Sahara company of having duped investors in a housing project worth Rs 25,000 crore.

The couple alleged that they were not allotted a flat even after investing over Rs one lakh in the proposed housing project 'Sahara Swaran Yojana' in the National Capital Region (NCR) in 2003.

Pandey filed the compliant against six people, including Roy, deputy managing directors Om Prakash Srivastava, Joy Broto Roy and Swapna Roy and Delhi projects in-charge HS Rawat.

It was alleged that despite the promise to give him the house, no progress was made in its project in the NCR region and the company after six years offered to return Rs 1.58 lakh. The complaint said the company duped investors by promising to build 217 townships across the country.

Meanwhile, market regulator Securities and Exchange Board of India (SEBI) had filed a plea before the apex court alleging that Roy and two of his company had collected about Rs 24,000 crore from investors towards those housing projects but not refunded their money after they failed to fulfill the promise to people.

In March 2014, the top court had sent Roy to jail for his failure to comply with its repeated direction to deposit the investors' money with SEBI. Although it had granted bail to him but imposed a condition that he will be released after he deposits Rs 10,000 crore (Rs 5,000 cash and the same amount of bank guarantee) which Roy has not been able to do so far.