Ketan Parekh and others to be sentenced on April 1

Mumbai, Mar 28 (UNI) Stock brokers Ketan Parekh and Hiten Dalal will be sentenced, alongwith six others including the then top officers of Canbank Financial Services (Canfina), by the Bombay High Court on April 1, for their involvement in the 1992 securities scam.

The special court (For trial of Offences Relating to Transactions in Securities Act), headed by Justice V M Kanade, had earlier convicted the accused and held that Parekh, Dalal and Canfina officials entered into a criminal conspiracy to ''siphon off Rs 47 crore''.

Bangalore-based Canfina, a subsidiary of Canara Bank, was the victim of this scam.

According to the prosecution, money belonging to Canfina was transferred to some accounts with Canbank Mutual Fund (CMBF) in Mumbai by default, but instead of returning the money to Canfina, CBMF diverted it to the accounts of Parkeh and other stock-brokers.

Apart from Parekh, those held guilty of criminal conspiracy and misappropriation of funds were -- Stock brokers Hiten Dalal, S K Jhaveri, Pallav Seth and Navinchandra Parekh, Canfina's former assistant vice presidents Sainath Mohan, M K Ashok Kumar and former general manager of CBMF B R Acharya.

Former assistant vice president of Canfina N Balsubramaniam, former general manager of CBMF P J Subbarao and B V Srinivasan of Vysya Bank were acquitted by the court.

These fraudulent transactions took place in October 1991 and January 1992.

The total loss to Canfina was of Rs 47.70 crore.

The Bombay High court will pronounce the sentences after hearing both the prosecution and defence on the quantum of sentences, on the same day.

Besides this, Parekh is also facing charges for his involvement in the 2001 Ahmedabad based Madhavpura bank scam, in which the bank was duped to the tune of crores of rupees.

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