JUDGMENT

1. Delay condoned. Leave granted.

2. Heard learned counsel for the appellant.

3. Financial swindling and duping of gullible investors/depositors is not unique to India. It has been referred to in Charles Dicken’s novel ‘Little Dorrit’, in which Mr. Merdle sets up a Ponzi scheme resulting in loss of the savings of thousands of depositors including the Dorrits and Arthur Clennam. In recent times there have been many such scandals e.g. the get-rich-quick scheme of the scamster Bernard Madoff in which the estimated losses of investors were estimated to be 21 billion dollars.

4. The present case illustrates what has been going on in India for quite some time. Non-banking financial companies have duped thousands of innocent and gullible depositors of their hard earned money by promising high rates of interest on these deposits, and then done the moonlight flit, often disappearing into another State or even foreign countries leaving the depositors as well as the State police high and dry.

5. This appeal has been filed against the impugned judgment and order of the Full Bench of the Madras dated 02.03.2007 in writ petition No. 26108/2005.

6. By means of the aforesaid writ petiti