The court emphasized that the nature of serious economic offences necessitates careful consideration of public interest over individual liberty, particularly when ongoing investigations are involved.

ORDER :

S. K. SAHOO, J.

1.This is the third successive bail application of the petitioner Shrikant Mohta before this Court. The first bail application in BLAPL No.1983 of 2019 was rejected on 13.05.2019 and the second one in BLAPL No.5450 of 2019 was rejected on 02.01.2020. The petitioner approached the Hon’ble Supreme Court against the rejection order dated 02.01.2020 by preferring petition for Special Leave to Appeal (Crl.) No.839 of 2020 which was also dismissed on 10.02.2020. After the dismissal of the Special Leave Petition, the petitioner without preferring any application for bail before the learned trial Court, has approached this Court directly and filed the present bail application on 17.08.2020.

The petitioner is an accused in R.C. Case No. 39/S/2014-Kol corresponding to SPE Case No. 34 of 2014 pending on the file of Special C.J.M. (C.B.I.), Bhubaneswar for commission of offences punishable under sections 420, 409 read with section 120-B of the Indian Penal Code and sections 4, 5 and 6 of the Prize Chits and Money Circulation Schemes (Banning) Act, 1978 (hereafter ‘1978 Act’).

2. The present case was instituted by clubbing three first information reports of three different cases i.e. Buguda P.S. Case No.75 of 2013, Jeypore Town P.S. Case No.71 of 2013 and Nuapada P.S. Case No.82 of 2013 in pursuance of the order dated 09.05.2014 of the Hon’ble Supreme Court of India passed in W.P. (Civil) No.401 of 2013 filed by Shri Subrata Chattoraj and W.P. (Civil) No.413 of 2013 filed by Shri Alok Jena.

The factual matrix of the prosecution case is that Rose Valley Group of Companies (hereafter for short ‘Rose Valley’) collected huge amount of money from public enticing them with false promise of paying higher rates of interest although Rose Valley was not having any authorization from the Reserve Bank of India (hereafter for short ‘RBI’) or the Securities and Exchange Board of India (hereafter for short ‘SEBI’) for carrying out such activities and therefore, the company cheated the public.

Investigation revealed that ‘Rose Valley Resorts and Plantations Limited, Kolkata’ was founded in the year 1997 and in the year 2002, SEBI imposed ban on the teak based investment schemes which the company was carrying out, for which the schemes floated were stopped. The company was renamed as ‘Rose Valley Hotel and Entertainment Limited’ in the year 1999. Two more companies in the name of ‘Rose Valley Real Estates Constructions Limited’ and ‘Real Estate and Landbank India Ltd.’ were founded subsequently in the year 1999 and 2001 which were registered with the Registrar of Companies (hereafter for short ‘ROC’). Rose Valley started expanding its spheres and a lot of new companies were formed in between 1997 to 2012. The accused persons, namely Gautam Kundu, Chairman of Rose Valley, Shibamoy Dutta, Managing Director, Ashok Kumar Saha and Ram Lal Goswami, Directors of Rose Valley in furtherance of criminal conspiracy by establishing branches of the companies in different parts of India, collected money from the public through multi-level agent network system. They cheated the investors/depositors by way of camouflaged schemes and false assurance about legal sanctity and false promise of higher rates of interest. The accused persons also cheated the depositors as well as the agents by making false assurance that the accused companies were legally empowered to collect