Post News Network
Cuttack, March 16: Mumbai-based model Preeti Bhatia, who was arrested by the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) in connection with the multi-crore chit fund scam, received a major blow with the Orissa High Court Monday rejecting her bail plea.
The CBI argued in the court that investigation is on over the alleged money trail in Preeti’s case. The court accepted the argument of the central agency that the probe is likely to be affected if the model was granted bail.
Preeti’s counsel urged the court to grant bail to the model and argued that a woman who spends about four months in jail may lose her mental balance. Besides, the other accused in the case, such as Ranjan Das and Pravat Tripathy had already been granted bail. However, such arguments failed to satisfy the court, which ruled that Preeti’s case was different from the others.
Earlier, after completing hearing on her bail plea, the High Court had reserved its verdict on March 9.
The bail plea of Preeti, who was arrested by the CBI for her dubious deals with the Artha Tatwa (AT) group, had earlier been rejected both by the CBI court in Bhubaneswar and the Khurda district and sessions court.
The CBI, which is probing the Orissa chit fund scam, had extracted some crucial information on the dubious business transactions of Prism Heights Films and Entertainment Private Limited with the tainted Artha Tatwa group during the course of its interrogation of Preeti. The Mumbai-based model was one of the three directors of Prism Heights, which has its registered office at Santa Cruz (West) area in Mumbai. The other two directors were Pradeep Sethy and Indu Dewan.
Acting on the information ferreted out during Preeti’s interrogation, the central investigating agency had started investigating the suspicious money transactions by the three directors of the company out of the crores got by AT group from thousands of gullible investors, CBI sources had said.
