Calcutta, Dec. 10: Jessop owner Pawan Kumar Ruia was today arrested from his Delhi home on an Indian Railways complaint of cheating against the Calcutta-based engineering company.
A four-member team from the Bengal CID, which is probing a series of fires and thefts on Jessop's premises in Dum Dum, picked Ruia up from his home in Delhi's Sunder Nagar neighbourhood. He was brought to Calcutta tonight.
Ruia is known to buy big and small sick companies in India and abroad. The railways have alleged the disappearance of materials worth Rs 49.8 crore they had supplied to Jessop to build EMU engines.
CID sources said tonight that the sleuths had entered Ruia's bungalow at the tail of flower suppliers who had arrived to decorate the house for the industrialist's birthday celebrations today.
They claimed Ruia first went to a toilet and then moved to the servants' quarters which, the sleuths found, were locked from inside. The investigators broke the door open, the sources claimed. The version could not be corroborated with any Ruia spokesperson because of the late hour.
In the afternoon, a Ruia Group spokesperson had said the industrialist would contest the arrest at an appropriate legal forum.
"We fail to understand how he can be dragged into the matter as he is not a director, shareholder or executive of Jessop. He is not an occupier of the Jessop premises, either," he added.
B.L. Meena, CID deputy inspector-general, said that Kaushik Kumar Das, railway deputy director (materials), had lodged a complaint with Dum Dum police station on November 25 against Jessop and Company. "Das accused Jessop of duping the railways out of Rs 49.8 crore."
Das did not mention Ruia's name in the FIR, a CID source said, but the agency decided to arrest the industrialist because it considered him to be the owner of the engineering unit.
Ruia has been charged with cheating and criminal breach of trust, punishable with up to a seven-year jail term.
The investigators had learnt that Ruia had returned to his Delhi home from abroad three days ago, sources said. A CID team caught the Rajdhani Express on Friday.
"But we had to send another team by flight because the train was running nearly 20 hours late and we did not want to take chances," an officer said.
Ruia had acquired Jessop in 2003 under the Atal Bihari Vajpayee government's divestment programme.
"In the complaint, Das has mentioned that materials worth Rs 49.8 crore were supplied to Jessop between 2009 and 2012 to manufacture air-conditioned EMU coaches. When a railways team visited the factory recently, the materials had disappeared," the officer said.
Jessop had shut down in May 2014 during the general election. It reopened for a day on August 9 that year and Ruia promised that production would start soon. But the unit shut down again the following morning.
The Mamata Banerjee government had passed a bill months before the Assembly polls in summer this year to take over Jessop and Dunlop, the ailing tyre-maker that Ruia had bought in 2005. Ruia had failed to revive either company despite early successes and had got entangled in legal disputes.
CID sources said Ruia would also be charged in the cases relating to the thefts and fires at the Jessop factory.
Some 92 thefts were reported between 2009 and 2015. Fires broke out three times in recent months, including a devastating blaze on October 17 that destroyed five almirahs stashed with documents relating to the engineering unit's business and audit reports.
Forensic experts had alleged the fire had been a deliberate act.
Calcutta High Court had in October last year ordered Jessop to step up security at the factory. After the October 17 fire this year, the police had lodged a suo motu case against Ruia.
Shortly after this, Ruia had met state fire minister Sovan Chatterjee and claimed he was not involved in the recent incidents at the factory. Asked about the meeting, Chatterjee had told The Telegraph he "did not listen to Ruia".
