Ketan Parekh, others to be sentenced on Tuesday

Mumbai, Mar 30 (UNI) Stock brokers Ketan Parekh and Hiten Dalal will be sentenced along with 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.

A special court, headed by Justice V M Kanade, had on the previous occassion had held Parekh, Dalal and Canfina officials guilty of entering into a criminal conspiracy to ''siphon off Rs 47 crore'' from Bangalore-based Canfina, a subsidiary of Canara Bank.

According to the prosecution, the amount was transferred to some accounts with Canbank Mutual Fund (CMBF) in Mumbai by mistake. But, instead of returning the amount to Canfina, CBMF diverted it to the accounts of Parekh 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 Ashokkumar and former general manager of CBMF B R Acharya.

Former Assistant Vice President of Canfina N Balsubramaniam, and two other top officials P J Subbarao and B V Srinivasan, were acquitted by the court.

These fraudulent transactions took place between October 1991 and January 1992 and inflicted losses of Rs 47.70 crore to Canfina.

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

Parekh, who was once known as ''pantafour bull'' and ''one man army''in the share market, is also facing charges for his involvement in the 2001 Ahmedabad-based Madhavpura Bank scam.

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