Cops: Dabba trading turnover almost 9kcr/month in city

Nagpur: The sleuths of Economic Offences Wing (EOW) of city police crime branch claimed that information unearthed so far from seizures and interrogations have revealed that fund flow in dabba trading could be up to Rs9,000 crores or more in the city every month. After raids at 10 places in collaboration with Securities and Exchange Board of India (Sebi) on Thursday, EOW continued their search on Friday at kingpin Ravi Agarwal’s Andheri East office in Mumbai, from where some computers and software were seized. EOW sleuths also presented the 13 accused arrested in the case before a magistrate’s court seeking remand custody for further probe. It’s learnt that 11 culprits have been sent to police custody till May 16. Two of those arrested, mastermind Ravi’s younger brother Neeraj Agrawal and Nimit Mehta, were sent to jail after the court took them into magisterial custody for two days in view of their complaints of police torture.
Special public prosecutor Shashank Choubey argued that prolonged remand of the culprits was required to gather concrete evidence into the serious white collar crime leading to massive loss of revenue for the government, which also weakened the national economy.
Crime branch has so far seized 17 computers, five laptops, one DVR, two servers, 19 mobile phones, eight televisions and cash Rs5 lakhs during the raids conducted by joint team of EOW, crime branch’s detection wing and Sebi officials. The raids were executed by PI Ravindra Patil, APIs Pradeep Lande and Pradeep Atulkar and others under DCP EOW Deepali Masirkar, DCP crime Ranjan Kumar Sharma, joint CP Rajvardhan and CP SP Yadav. Following searches early on Thursday at the premises of Khushal Laddhad and Veena Sarda, police had got hints of the dabba trading network in the city, prompting further raids across the city.
Sources from EOW claimed that Ravi, one of the biggest traders of Central India, has his network spread to Dubai too, from where many of his operations and transactions were being controlled. “The government is suffering an estimated Rs30 crore revenue loss on a daily basis in Nagpur itself due to deals worth Rs300 crore on the dabba trading network, which bypasses the stock exchange market. Police had to spend second hectic day to complete formalities and also gather preliminary information from seized material, especially the electronic evidence and records, to find out more about the dabba trade and its network,” said an officer. “These dabba traders also have their moles planted within various private companies, to get information about probable loss or gain, and help the traders manipulate stock prices in the exchange. Many such details are likely to come to fore,” he said.
It’s learnt that even investors participating in the dabba trade for quick, unaccounted and untaxed income would be under the police scanner for various violations. “The racketeers had also been manipulating the stocks in such a manner as to multiply their gains and leave investors in losses,” said an officer in the probe team.
City police have now launched a search for Ravi, who owns sophisticated software to conduct dabba trading, in the city and elsewhere. Cops are also on the lookout for more persons involved in the trade.
Sources in crime branch said Veena had approached Ambazari cops against Khushal for having barged into her residence at Shankar Nagar over a monetary dispute. Khushal had also approached crime branch seeking action against Veena for defaulting on Rs6 crores payable to him. The ensuing probe had led to the exposure of the network.