Former Gujarat home minister Vipul Chaudhary, arrested in a case of alleged financial irregularities of nearly Rs 800 crore when he was chairman of Dudhsagar Dairy, was remanded to seven-day police custody on Friday by a court in Mehsana town.
The Gujarat Anti-Corruption Bureau (ACB), which arrested Chaudhary on Thursday, sought 14-day custody on various grounds. Following arguments from both defence and prosecution, additional district and sessions judge AL Vyas granted seven-day custody of the former minister to the anti-graft agency.
Along with Chaudhary, the court also remanded his Chartered Accountant Shailesh Parikh to the ACB's custody for a week. Chaudhary is a former chairman of the Gujarat Cooperative Milk Marketing Federation (GCMMF), which owns the well-known Amul brand, and also headed the Mehsana District Cooperative Milk Producers' Union Ltd, popularly known as Dudhsagar Dairy.
The Mehsana ACB had on Wednesday registered a first Information report (FIR) against Chaudhary and others in connection with alleged financial irregularities of nearly Rs 800 crore when he was chairman of Dudhsagar Dairy between 2005 and 2016.
The agency alleged that apart from making money through financial irregularities, the former minister, during his tenure as chairman of Dudhsagar Dairy, had also indulged in money laundering by depositing the proceeds of the crime into bank accounts of 31 companies created for that specific purpose.
Chaudhary's wife Gitaben and son Pavan were also shown as co-accused in the FIR as they are directors in some of the companies floated by him. Chaudhary had misused his power as the dairy chairman and ignored the procedures in purchasing a large number of milk coolers as well as gunny bags, approved construction worth Rs 485 crore and did not follow the tender route to give a contract for the dairy's outdoor publicity campaign, the ACB has said.
In order to legalize the money received through such malpractices, Chaudhary had floated 31 companies using forged documents and deposited the proceeds of the crime into the bank accounts of those entities, the anti-graft agency has stated. Chaudhary, a prominent face of Gujarat's cooperative sector, was home minister in the Shankarsinh Vaghela government in 1996.
(With PTI Inputs)
