Chanda Kochhar, Managing Director and CEO, ICICI Bank. File
| Photo Credit: SHASHI ASHIWAL
The Bombay High Court on Tuesday ruled the arrest of ICICI Bank’s former Managing Director and Chief Executive Officer Chanda Kochhar, and her husband Deepak Kochhar by the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) in the Videocon loan case as illegal. Justice Anuja Prabhudessai and Justice N.R. Borkar confirmed to grant the couple interim bail on January 9, 2023.
Giving the verdict, the Bench rejected CBI’s arrest reasons memo in December 2023 that non-cooperation and non-disclosure of true facts of the case. “Article 20(3) is an essential safeguard in criminal cases and is meant to be a vital safeguard against torture, and other coercive methods used by investigating agencies. Hence, merely because an accused does not confess, it cannot be said that the accused have not cooperated with the investigation,” the judges said announcing the verdict.
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The couple was arrested by CBI for alleged irregularities in a loan of ₹3,250 crore granted to the Videocon Group in the year 2012. The CBI’s charges claimed that the former Videocon chairman Venugopal Dhoot allegedly invested crores of rupees in NuPower Renewables, a company founded by Deepak Kochhar, months after the ICICI Bank loan was granted to the Videocon group.
In January 2023, the couple was released by an interim order after a coordinate bench held their arrest was prima facie not in accordance with section 41A and section 41(1)(b)(ii) of the CrPC.