
NEW DELHI, MAY 16: Before the police or a million investors could catch up with the absconding Pradyuman Kumar Sharma, chairman of the Kuber Group of companies, he got 14 days8217; interim bail from the Supreme Court last week.
Officials of the Economic Offences Wing EOW of the Crime Branch in Delhi and police personnel from various States have been on the lookout for Sharma for nearly a month. And when the application for interim bail was heard in Supreme Court on May 7, there was no police official or lawyer to oppose it.
Sharma and the other Board of Directors have been in hiding ever since the scam broke out last month. The Kuber group comprised nine companies, prominent among them the Kuber Mutual Benefits Limited, Kuber Planters, Kuber Auto General Finance and Kuber Builders. They had 400 branch offices, spread all over the country. There were as many as 300 schemes in which small investors put their money, lured by the attractive interest offers.The Kuber group was pulled up by the High Court in October 1998, for their misleading advertisements and claims that the Reserve Bank of India RBI had given them a 8220;clean chit.8221;
Several harried investors and agents have been camping in Delhi over the last six months. All of them have given up hope of recovering their money.