The Hindu : New Delhi News : Supreme Court lawyer allegedly dupes client

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Wednesday, Aug 11, 2004

New Delhi

New Delhi

Supreme Court lawyer allegedly dupes client

By Our Staff Reporter

NEW DELHI, AUG. 10. A practising Supreme Court lawyer allegedly duped his client of over Rs. 1.6 crores by assuring her that she had a won a case fought in a German court two years ago. The Economic Offences Wing (EOW) of the Delhi police caught up with him today after it was found that no case was filed in the first place.

Guninder Kaur Gill, a resident of Safdarjung Enclave, lodged a complaint against her lawyer, Basant N. Singhvi, who also happened to be her family friend, on July 14.

Ms. Gill had joined the Deutsche Bank of Germany in 1990 and was posted as a senior officer at the Singapore Branch of the Bank in 1998. Around the same time, the South-East Asian economies went into a tailspin and, as a result, Ms. Gill's services were terminated. However, she was not paid her dues.

The victim placed faith in her lawyer Singhvi and asked him to fight her case. Singhvi agreed and went to Germany eight times -- costing the client Rs. 25 lakhs -- and claimed that he had hired a German lawyer by the name, Fraudeen Wang Essn, and filed a case before the German Federal Labour Court in Frankfurt.

On January 10, 2002, Singhvi gave the "good news" to Ms. Gill that she had been awarded 253,000 euros by the court as settlement and that the Deutsche Bank was asked to pay the amount by July 31, 2002. Singhvi then asked Ms. Gill to pay Rs. 1.4 crores to pay the bills of Mr. Fraudeen which she did.

Almost a year after the deadline passed, Ms. Gill ran out of patience and asked Singhvi about the payment. Singhvi then showed her a letter, purportedly written by Mr. Fraudeen, mentioning that the Bank had deposited the amount in the court on March 31, 2003, and that the amount would be released in her favour after July 31, 2003.

Ms. Gill again asked Singhvi about the amount after the deadline passed for the second time. He came up with another letter, purportedly written by him to Mr. Fraudeen on February 27 this year, in which Mr. Fraudeen was asked to ensure that the payment was made directly to the complainant.

Singhvi even told Ms. Gill that he had written to the Directorate of Enforcement (DoE) as the money sent from Germany had, by mistake, come in his name. Ms. Gill contacted the DoE only to be told that the agency had no business in such transactions. Singhvi then told her that as soon as he received the cheques, he would transfer the amount in her name. In February, Singhvi gave a forged demand draft, to be encashed at American Express Bank, to his client. The Bank told Ms. Gill that it had no tie up with the German Bank.

In order to keep Ms. Gill away, Singhvi gave her a cheque for Rs. 1.38 crores drawn on UCO Bank, Supreme Court compound branch, on June 15. To her horror, Ms. Gill found that the Bank had only a few thousand rupees in all. A frustrated Ms. Gill then decided to get in touch with the German Bar Council and the German Bank. She came to know that Mr. Fraudeen never existed and there was no case filed in the first place. Finally, she got in touch with police on July 14.

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