Brokerage firm accused of duping retired IAS officer; inquiry on

National Stock Exchange to hear case tomorrow

A month after 77-year-old Mohan Bhaya, a retired IAS officer, lodged a complaint against a stock broking firm saying it duped him of Rs 5 lakh, the local police have failed to make any headway in the case till now. While the police claim to be “looking into the matter”, Bhaya’s hopes are now pinned on a hearing on the matter at National Stock Exchange’s Pune office on May 8.

Bhaya lives alone in Kalyaninagar area of as his children are settled abroad and wife has passed away. With his movements restricted due to age-related problems, he finds it difficult to make rounds of the police station. Bhaya is known for his participation as a senior government executive in the 1984 Operation Blue Star, which was launched by the then Prime Minister Indira Gandhi to flush out terrorists from Golden Temple, Amritsar. He has also served as adviser to the local administration after the Bhopal gas tragedy.

His track record as an IAS officer, said Bhaya, meant nothing for people who “took advantage” of his old age and cheated him of Rs 5 lakh and were now allegedly pestering him for Rs 22 lakh more. “The stock broking firm convinced me to open a trading account with it and try a few transactions of futures and options (F&O). While I considered F&O as speculation and gambling, they told me they do hedging with no possibility of loss,” said Bhaya who had also lodged a complaint with SEBI, which transferred the case to the NSE. The NSE has called Bhaya for the hearing on May 8.

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Bhaya said he had told the firm that he did not know much about such trades. “But they assured me that they would explain everything before doing any trade and each trade would be authorised by me. I reluctantly agreed but they did not come and explain anything. Instead, they evidently made reckless and rash big trades, without valid authorisation,” Bhaya has stated in his complaint to SEBI and the police.
After a few trades, Bhaya said, they told him that they had incurred a loss of Rs 27 lakh “which they told me that I will have to pay”.
This, said Bhaya, amounted to cheating and criminal breach of trust.

“Besides, if recording of authorisation is checked, it will clearly establish that I kept on saying I did not understand what they were doing and that they must come and explain to me first as to what they were doing. They promised to do that, but did not keep it.”

Bhaya said he had urged the police commissioner and SEBI to restrain the stock broking firm from making him liable for the loss and ask it to close his account and transfer his share-portfolio, which the firm had “unlawfully” kept in its pool account.

“After examining the papers, experts have told me that the firm has taken undue advantage of my age and ignorance about F&O and has cheated me. A look at the trades show that they were not done in good faith, but were done with mala fide intentions to generate heavy brokerage,” the complaint stated.

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Bhaya said investigations at his personal level revealed the firm as a practice targeted senior citizens and lured them into opening account with it in the same manner.

“Once the senior citizen opens the account, his life’s savings disappear from the trading account like it happened to me…They have taken away Rs 5 lakh from my trading account and are pressuring me for Rs 22 lakh more by levying 21 per cent interest…,” Bhaya told Newsline on Tuesday.

The city police apparently seem to be finding it difficult to understand the modus operandi used by the firm. “Since it is an economic offence, we are trying to understand the whole thing and that is why it is taking time,” said a senior officer.

Deputy Commissioner of Police Rajesh Bansode said: “We are inquiring into the matter and will be able to comment once the inquiry is completed.”

Manoj Dattatrye More

Manoj More has been working with the Indian Express since 1992. For the first 16 years, he worked on the desk, edited stories, made pages, wrote special stories and handled The Indian Express edition. In 31 years of his career, he has regularly written stories on a range of topics, primarily on civic issues like state of roads, choked drains, garbage problems, inadequate transport facilities and the like. He has also written aggressively on local gondaism. He has primarily written civic stories from Pimpri-Chinchwad, Khadki, Maval and some parts of Pune. He has also covered stories from Kolhapur, Satara, Solapur, Sangli, Ahmednagar and Latur. He has had maximum impact stories from Pimpri-Chinchwad industrial city which he has covered extensively for the last three decades. Manoj More has written over 20,000 stories. 10,000 of which are byline stories. Most of the stories pertain to civic issues and political ones. The biggest achievement of his career is getting a nearly two kilometre road done on Pune-Mumbai highway in Khadki in 2006. He wrote stories on the state of roads since 1997. In 10 years, nearly 200 two-wheeler riders had died in accidents due to the pathetic state of the road. The local cantonment board could not get the road redone as it lacked funds. The then PMC commissioner Pravin Pardeshi took the initiative, went out of his way and made the Khadki road by spending Rs 23 crore from JNNURM Funds. In the next 10 years after the road was made by the PMC, less than 10 citizens had died, effectively saving more than 100 lives. Manoj More's campaign against tree cutting on Pune-Mumbai highway in 1999 and Pune-Nashik highway in 2004 saved 2000 trees. During Covid, over 50 doctors were asked to pay Rs 30 lakh each for getting a job with PCMC. The PCMC administration alerted Manoj More who did a story on the subject, asking then corporators how much money they demanded....The story worked as doctors got the job without paying a single paisa. Manoj More has also covered the "Latur drought" situation in 2015 when a "Latur water train" created quite a buzz in Maharashtra. He also covered the Malin tragedy where over 150 villagers had died. Manoj More is on Facebook with 4.9k followers (Manoj More), on twitter manojmore91982 ... Read More

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