HC junks petitions of former Agri Gold directors

The High Court in Hyderabad dismissed the petition filed by five directors of Agri Gold Company who sought quashing of criminal cases against them.

Justice A Shankar Narayana gave this order on Monday after hearing the petition filed by A Uday Bhaskar Rao, A Subrahmanaya Sharma, AVenkata Siva Ram, KVS Sai Ram and A Seetha Rama Rao seeking quashing of criminal cases against them on the ground that they were directors of Agri Gold Company but resigned later on and they cannot be held responsible for subsequent events.

It may be noted that criminal cases were registered against the management of Agri Gold Company after it failed to pay the monies it collected from nearly 32 lakh depositors across the states of Andhra Pradesh, Telangana, Karnataka, Tamil Nadu and Odisha etc and the scam became clear.

The judge, in his order, noted that these directors floated new companies and monies were transferred from Agri Gold Company to these small companies.

The role of each of the petitioner in collecting deposits and the role in transferring money to other entities needs to be investigated and therefore at this stage the criminal cases cannot be quashed, the judge declared and dismissed the petition.