Court denies bail to lawyer booked for ‘fabricating Bombay HC orders, swindling Rs 2.5 crore from woman'
A sessions court in Mumbai has rejected the bail application of a lawyer booked for allegedly swindling Rs 2.57 crore from a woman by fabricating orders of the Bombay High Court. The accused, Vinay Kumar Khatu, 42, was arrested by the Azad Maidan police in South Mumbai in October last year.
'In this case, the applicant is a practising lawyer with standing of more than 20 years. I presume that he knows and understands the sanctity of his profession and the services he rendered to society and his clients. The allegations against the applicant are very serious,' Additional Sessions Judge V G Raghuvanshi said in the order dated June 3.
The complainant in the case said that she had engaged Khatu as a lawyer in 12 cases related to her personal and property matters.
The First Information Report (FIR) stated that the accused told her that he had filed appeals in the pending cases before the high court and informed her in 2022 that two cases had been decided in her favour, seeking fees from her in each of the pending cases, and inducing the woman by showing the favourable orders. When she subsequently tried to look for the orders on the high court website, she failed to find them and filed the FIR in 2024.
Denying that he had given her any fabricated order, Khatu claimed that the complainant is a 'seasoned litigant' and this was her way to avoid paying professional fees to advocates. The court, rejecting Khatu's plea, said there was prima facie proof in terms of a WhatsApp chat against him.
The court held that previously, two offences were filed against Khatu for misrepresenting himself as an Indian Administrative Service (IAS) officer. It took into consideration that people engage lawyers because they do not understand court procedures or the nature of orders and laws.
It added that using its discretion to grant bail to the accused in the case would send a 'wrong message' to society, considering the seriousness of the allegations.
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