Bulls - Back to explore

Chennai:
The city police are having a tough time. They are being flooded with phone calls from senior officials and politicians of both Union and state government. All of them have just one request: Don’t pursue the case against Gold Quest International.

The callers included senior bureaucrats from ministry of home affairs, state ministers, personal assistants of senior ministers and top IAS and IPS officers from different parts of the country. “We had to switch off our mobiles as the requests were many,” a senior police officer said. It was on Saturday that the city police cracked down on a chain marketing company and arrested seven persons including its director for fraudulent business practices and cheating.

Earlier, a high court bench, comprising judges Elipe Dharma Rao and S R Singharavelu had set aside the earlier order passed by judge Kannadasan and ordered reopening of the case. In its order dated March 7, 2008, the bench instructed the city police “to file the final report for consideration of the concerned magistrate.” Appropriate action can be taken in accordance with law, it said.

Following this, the central crime branch police, after five years, have reopened the case registered against the multi level marketing company. “We will soon send summons to the 172 persons who lodged complaints against Gold Quest company in 2003. But since the company had already paid investors their deposit amount, they are not likely to pursue the case,” a senior police officer said.
The arrested were Pushpam Apala Naidu (45), managing director of the company in India, Augustine (37) and C S Dhandapani (33), both directors of the company, apart from Hariprabhakar (39), Sumesh (28), Chandrasekar Rao (40) and Vidya (30), employees of the company. Police were acting on a complaint from Dinesh Kumar (33) of Chetpet, who said he was cheated by the company. He had got himself enrolled by paying Rs 62,000 in the company’s multilevel marketing network.

Sources said Pushpam and Augustine were arrested in a similar case in 2003. The Madras high court passed an order on April 19, 2005 and asked the company to repay the amount deposited by its 172 investors. If the company paid the amount to the victims, the case registered with the central crime branch can be quashed, the order read.

A senior police officer said, “Pushpam, managing director of the company, had given a wrong address to the Registrar of Companies (RoC) while registering the firm in 2001. Pushpam had mentioned a lawyer’s address in Shanthi Colony in Anna Nagar as his. We are yet to verify the other addresses.”