Nagpur: In a stunning courtroom showdown over the probe into suicide of govt contractor PV Verma, the magistrate on Thursday declared the arrest of key accused Sharad Maind, general manager of Pusad Urban Cooperative Bank, as “illegal”. The magistrate rejected Crime Branch’s plea for seven-day police custody and remanded him to judicial custody instead. Police, on the other hand, claimed Maind insisted on medical treatment, delaying his arrest process.The ruling cited procedural lapses like absence of a proper arrest ‘panchnama’, delayed arrest memorandum, and failure to produce him within 24 hours under Bharatiya Nagarik Suraksha Sanhita. This forced investigators to announce plans to file a revision petition before the sessions court on Friday. The other arrested accused, Manjit Singh Wade, was remanded in police custody for four days.Compounding the drama, police unleashed high stakes searches over the last 24 hours, unearthing incriminating evidence that deepened allegations of financial foul play in the Yavatmal and Nagpur banking circles. Led by senior inspector Mahesh Sagade under the supervision of CP Ravinder Singal, the operations targeted three locations on Wednesday. They yielded gadgets, documents, and records that investigators say expose a web of predatory lending, forgery, and coercion linked to Verma’s despair and probably victimisation of many others.The searches kicked off at Sharad Maind’s residence in Pusad, where sleuths seized two mobile phones and a tablet now headed for forensic analysis to uncover digital trails of threats or loan demands against Verma. At Maind’s residence and office in Pusad Cooperative Bank, the haul included almost 60 loan files, pre-signed stamp papers, application forms, cheque books, RTGS forms, and a cache of documents, including those bearing Verma’s signature. These suggest manipulated debts and potential money laundering through the cooperative network.The net widened to moneylender Manjit Wade’s home at Nari in north Nagpur — the shadowy moneylender and a former murder accused arrested alongside Maind on September 17 — revealing receipt books from shady operations of chit funds, stacks of blank signed stamp papers, and blank cheques. Sources say this points to a racket enforcing high interest rates on vulnerable contractors and loan seekers like Verma, using fabricated documents to manipulate and enforce debts.Shifting to Nagpur, the team raided Maind’s office in Narendra Nagar, the credit cooperative society and confiscated a computer laden with suspected transaction records, member lists, and ledgers that allegedly funnelled loans, further ensnaring Verma. Several signed blank ‘bipatra’ or cheques, which are only usable at her cooperative credit society for cash transactions, were also seized. The saga traces back to September 1, when the body of Verma, a prominent govt contractor, was found hanging at his Rajnagar residence, prompting registration of an abetment to suicide case.
