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The Economic Offences Wing (EOW) of the Mumbai police has made the sixth arrest in the Rs 122-crore misappropriation case involving New India Co-operative Bank, after Arunachalam Ullahanathan Maruthuvar, who had remained at large, surrendered.
According to the police, the main accused, Hitesh Mehta, a former general manager of the bank, had stolen money from the bank’s safe over six years (between 2019 and 2025) and handed it over to his two close accomplices—Dharmesh Paun and Maruthuvar—who helped misappropriate the funds. While Mehta and Paun were arrested in February, Maruthuvar’s role was identified soon after the scam came to light, the police added.
“It has come to our notice that Maruthuvar received approximately Rs 30 crore from the misappropriated funds by Mehta. He helped the main accused route the funds,” an officer privy to the investigation said on Sunday.
The police said that after the fraud was discovered during an RBI inspection at the bank’s Prabhadevi and Goregaon branches on February 12, Mehta confessed to the crime and revealed the roles of Paun and Maruthuvar. Accordingly, the EOW deployed multiple teams across various parts of India to trace him, but Maruthuvar was nowhere to be found.
“Maruthuvar then appeared before us and surrendered, following which he was placed under arrest and produced before a court. The court has granted police custody until March 18 for further investigation,” a police officer said.
The police said they were trying to determine whether Maruthuvar was aware that Mehta had misused his position to illegally collect and deposit cash in the safe of their head office between 2019 and 2020, further embezzling the funds in small amounts.
The other accused arrested in the case are the bank’s ex-CEO Ambhimanyu Bhoan, Maruthuvar’s son Manohar, and Kapil Dedhia. At least two others—former bank chairman Hiren Bhanu and his wife, vice-chairperson Gauri Bhanu—are wanted in the case.
While they are trying to ascertain the details, the investigators said the money was either routed or deposited into the bank accounts of the arrested people. “We also suspect that the money has been routed abroad through hawala channels,” an officer said.
Maruthuvar is a businessman who deals in solar panels and it is suspected that he helped Mehta route the embezzled money through his company.
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