A Mumbai court has refused to close a case against Bharatiya Janata Party leader Kirit Somaiya and his son Neil for allegedly misappropriating Rs 57 crore of funds collected from the public for refurbishing Indian Naval Ship Vikrant, the Hindustan Times reported on Tuesday.
The closure report filed by Mumbai Police’s Economic Offence Wing was rejected by the Additional Chief Judicial Magistrate SP Shinde of the Esplanade Metropolitan Magistrate Court on August 8.
The rejection came after the court observed that while drives to collect the funds had been undertaken at various locations, the investigating officer had only looked into the one outside the Churchgate railway station, the Hindustan Times reported.
The officer had also not ascertained what had happened with the collected funds, said the court, and ordered the case to be investigated further, The Indian Express reported.
A first information report was registered against Somaiya, a former BJP MP from Mumbai North East, and his son in 2022 under Indian Penal Code sections pertaining to cheating and dishonestly inducing delivery of property (420), punishment for criminal breach of trust (406) and acts done by several persons in furtherance of common intention (34).
The complaint was filed by Baban Bhosle, a retired Army officer.
The INS Vikrant (1961), India’s first aircraft carrier, was decommissioned from service in 1997 and was anchored as a museum at Mumbai’s Naval Docks until 2012. In November 2014, the Supreme Court gave its final clearance for the historic ship to be scrapped.
Bhosle said that he had himself donated Rs 2,000 to save the warship from being dismantled as part of Somaiya’s fund collection drive in 2013, The Indian Express reported. He alleged that while the Somaiyas claimed the funds had been submitted to the state’s governor, the Raj Bhavan had said in response to a Right to Information query that it had not received the money.
The Somaiyas have denied the allegations.
Somaiya told the police that only Rs 11,000 was collected and handed to the governor.
In its closure report filed in December 2022, the police said that they had recorded statements of 38 witnesses who had contributed money towards the cause during a drive conducted outside the Churchgate station, according to the Hindustan Times.
It was not possible to collect Rs 57 crore, as had been alleged, in a short period of time, the investigating officer observed.
While stating that it was unclear what had transpired during Somaiya’s meeting with the governor on the day of the drive, the officer sought the case to be closed saying that there was no misappropriation of the funds, the Hindustan Times reported.
However, the magistrate observed that some witnesses had claimed that the drives had been conducted in several locations besides the Churchgate station.
In 2022, a special court denied anticipatory bail for Somaiya and his son in the case. However, they were granted relief by the Bombay High Court.
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