MUMBAI, Oct 17: Indian Bank, which is reeling under huge non-performing assets (NPAs) and losses, has filed suits against nine top loan defaulters to recover an amount of Rs 535 crore. The bank filed these suits in the courts in the last one year even as the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) filed its first charge-sheet last week and the government recapitalised the bank by injecting fresh funds.According to the Reserve Bank of India's list of defaulters against which banks have filed suits, Chennai-based Maxwell Exim Foods tops the Indian Bank's defaulters list with an NPA of Rs 141.70 crore. The RBI has listed G Balakrishnan, B Darda, M S Mani, S Madhusudhanan, S Rajaraman, V P Haran and R Prathaharar as the directors of this company.The second top defaulter is East West Travels and Trade Links which owes Rs 100.71 crore to the bank. As per the RBI list, the directors of East West were Nazurrudin Shihaluddin, Thaha Kutty, Fazial, Peer Mohd and Najumudeen Abdullah. It has also filed suits againstMVR Industry Ltd (with S P Vairavan, R Prabhkaran, GS Kumar, V Nehru Pandian, Abdul Bari, VR Gopal Raj and P Hememalini as directors) to recover Rs 84.26 crore.It has also filed suits against Calcutta-based Ganapathy Exports Ltd for Rs 45.13 crore, Enkay Foods Rs 29.87 crore, Kiran Overseas Rs 22.52 crore, PJ Pipes and Vessels Rs 31.70 crore, Ravishankar Industries P Ltd Rs 48.17 crore and Sathyam Foods Ltd for Rs 31.74 crore.These loans were extended during the 1994-97 period when Indian Bank's net worth was almost wiped out by losses. According to another RBI report (Report on trends and progress of banking in India), this is the only public sector bank whose net NPA has gone above 20 per cent of its net advances.The net NPA of Indian Bank has gone up from 23.87 per cent to 25.24 per cent in 1996-97.The RBI has pegged Indian Bank's NPA at Rs 3,351 crore for the year 1996-97 as it found that bank's estimate of Rs 3,314.20 crore was an underestimation. Most of the borrowers of Indian Bank haveeither closed down or curtailed their business operations. East West, which was one of the leading private airline operating in the country, has closed down its operations following the murder of its managing director two years ago. Maxwell Exim Foods which owes the maximum - Rs 141 crore - is not a well-known company in business circles.CBI which is looking into the Indian Bank case had recently filed the first charge-sheet in the Indian Bank case in which former chairman M Gopalakrishnan is listed as accused number one. This charge-sheet pertains to the overdraft facility of Rs five crore to Akilam Constructions by the bank without obtaining any collateral security.
