Mumbai Court Gives Clean Chit To Ajit Pawar In Rs 25,000 Crore MSCB Scam

mumbai : A court here on Friday gave a clean chit to late Ajit Pawar and other accused by accepting the closure report submitted by the Economic Offenses Wing (EOW) of the city police in the case related to the alleged Rs 25,000 crore fraud in the Maharashtra State Cooperative Bank (MSCB). The court’s acceptance of the report came nearly a month after Pawar, the then deputy chief minister of Maharashtra, died in a plane crash in Baramati.

Special judge Mahesh Jadhav, in-charge of cases involving MPs and MLAs, accepted the ‘C-Summary’ report submitted by the EOW, which stated that no criminal case had been filed.

The court also dismissed protest petitions by activist Anna Hazare and others challenging the closure report.

The alleged fraud was related to the granting of loans to cooperative sugar mills, spinning mills and other entities by district banks and cooperative banks without adhering to norms. MSCB is the top cooperative bank of Maharashtra.

The investigation began in 2019 on the directions of the Bombay High Court.

The First Information Report included Pawar, who was then a director of one of the regional banks, along with government officials, the then directors and officials of MSCB and others.

EOW claimed that the state exchequer suffered a loss of Rs 25,000 billion between January 2007 and December 2017 due to irregularities in loan payments.

There have been many changes in the case since 2020. During the Maha Vikas Aghadi (MVA) government (with Ajit Pawar as finance minister), EOW submitted a closure report stating that no wrongdoing had been committed.

However, after the change of government in 2022, the investigating agency tried to reopen the case. But in January 2024, months after Ajit Pawar split the Nationalist Congress Party and joined the ruling alliance, the body once again submitted a closure report.