Odisha chit fund scam: CBI grills Indu Dewan, husband for second day

Reported by Santosh Jagdev
Bhubaneswar, Aug 28:

For the second consecutive day, the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) today grilled Indu Dewan, one of the directors of Mumbai-based Company Prism Heights Films & Entertainment Private Limited, and her husband Vikram Dewan at its state headquarters in Odisha capital for almost seven hours.

The couple appeared at the CBI office at around 11 am and came out at around 5.45 pm.

The Dewan couple avoided the media persons to speak about the reason of their appearance at the CBI office. But sources in the CBI said they were interrogated about their links with the Artha Tatwa group and its chief Pradeep Sethy and have seized many documents from them.

Yesterday, the CBI had grilled the couple for over four hours.

KC Mishra, senior counsel of the CBI said, the investigating agency grilled Indu and Vikram to verify the evidence the CBI has collected so far during their investigation against the couple.

“We have sent all the documents to the CBI headquarters in New Delhi against the duo to initiate action against them but yet to get a confirmation call regarding arrest from the headquarters,” the senior counsel of CBI said.

On December 11 last year, the Odisha High court had allowed CBI time to submit its case diary against Indu Dewan while adjudicating on her anticipatory bail plea.  The anticipatory bail plea of Ms Dewan was heard in the court of Justice Sangam Kumar Sahu.

The court had rejected the anticipatory bail plea of Ms Indu Dewan earlier this month.

According to the proceedings of the case, Ms Dewan, sister of Mumbai-based model Preeti Bhatia, had joined hands with AT Group chief Pradeep Kumar Sethy and Ms Bhatia to form a film production company in the name of Prism Heights Film and Entertainment Private Ltd in Mumbai.

Earlier, the CBI had arrested Mumbai-based model-turned-television serial co-producer Preeti Bhatia for her alleged links with the Ponzi firm on October 10 last year.

Ms Dewan, who is also one of the directors of the film production company, has moved the High Court for anticipatory bail apprehending arrest.