Owner of pvt firm arrested for creating fake bills of ₹33.66L to cheat Nagpur company

MUMBAI: Director of a city-based private company was arrested on Monday for forging bills and invoices worth ₹33.66 lakh in order to make a Nagpur-based company liable to pay the amount.

In addition to faking bills, the accused, identified as Nitin Kagzi, owner of Megament Steel Pvt Ltd, also threatened to file a false case in the National Company Law Tribunal (NCLT) against the Nagpur firm if they refused to pay the amount. The NCLT is a quasi-judicial body in India that handles corporate disputes related to the Companies Act.

According to the Marine Drive police, the complainant Mohsin Salim Khan works as an accounts manager in the Supreme Group of companies in Nagpur. The group companies deal in chemical products. The Supreme Group of Companies has four subsidiaries - Supreme Bitchem Pvt Ltd, Supreme StarTech Pvt Ltd, Supreme Urban Realty Pvt Ltd, and PQR Pvt Ltd.

In his complaint, Khan alleged that in the beginning of 2017, two representatives of the Mumbai-based company identified as Bhaskar Mehta and Darshan Mehta had visited his Nagpur office for business purposes and offered to supply bitumen at competitive rates. Bitumen is a thick, black, low-grade petroleum byproduct that’s made up of complex hydrocarbons and elements like sulphur, iron, calcium, and hydrogen.

Following the proposal, the company started buying raw materials from Megament Steel and cleared all the bills, said a police officer. Khan’s firm also updated the company’s ledger with all the payment information.

Khan further told the police that every purchase order and price was discussed with Kagzi and the two company representatives on their mobile phones. However, Khan said, Kagzi and his two employees claimed that dues worth ₹33.66 lakh for the bitumen supplied by them were pending. The complainant claimed that his firm’s employees showed all the payment transactions against the purchased goods and said that the bills and invoices sent claiming payments of ₹33.66 lakh were forged and they had not purchased the goods.

Based on Khan’s complaint, a case was registered under 420 (cheating), 465 (forgery), 467 (forgery of valuable security, will etc.), 468 (forgery for purpose of cheating),471 (using as genuine a forged document or electronic record) and 34 (common intention) of the Indian Penal code against Nitin Kagzi and his two employees Darshan Mehta and Bhaskar Mehta. “We had issued several notices to Kagzi but he did not appear at the police station for investigation,” said police sub-inspector Rakesh Shinde of the Marine Drive police station.

“We conducted a preliminary inquiry and ascertained that the invoices and bills were forged and therefore Kagzi was arrested in the case on April 3. He was initially remanded to police custody till Monday when the court remanded him to judicial custody,” said a police officer of the Marine Drive police station.