The Bombay high court has ordered the release of Rs. 20 lakh from the custody of a trial court to producer Rakesh Roshan who was the complainant in a cheating case lodged in 2011. A single-judge bench of Justice M.S. Karnik ordered the special CBI court to release the amount which was a part of Rs. 50 lakh lost by Roshan to two men who posed as officers of the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) in May 2011 for settling a case pending against him. The producer filed a complaint with the CBI, alleging that he was defrauded and it led to the arrest of the two accused and the seizure of gold and cash. The amount was kept in court custody as part of evidence.
In 2012, on Rakesh Roshan’s plea, the trial court allowed him to withdraw Rs. 30 lakh on furnishing an indemnity bond. He was asked to wait for the balance amount as the trial was still pending. Another plea of his in 2020 was rejected by the trial court on December 14, 2021 as the CBI strongly opposed it.
The high court noted that the trial court recently convicted Ashwini Sharma, the second of the two accused, in the cheating, extortion and impersonation case. He was sentenced to three years’ imprisonment. In 2022, another accused, Rajesh Rajan, was also sentenced to three years’ imprisonment. The high court, therefore, ordered the release of Rs. 20 lakh now.