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Bollywood actor arrested, freed on bail

CUTTACK: In a dramatic turn of events, the Orissa crime branch police on Tuesday arrested Bollywood film actor and producer Nasir Khan but were forced to release him within hours as he obtained bail from the State High Court. Khan, a native Uttar Pradesh and the producer of Shadow Pictures, is alleged to be the kingpin of Rs 500 crore multi-level marketing frauds.

Khan was in the city in connection with his bail and was picked up by the crime branch sleuths when he was going to meet his counsel in the High Court. While Khan claims that he was picked up from inside the premises of the court, Crime branch IG Arun Ray did not exactly specify from where he was arrested but maintained that the accused was arrested in Cuttack city itself and was released after court’s order.

“We have evidence about the involvement of the accused in the white-collar economic offence and our intention was to take preventive and remedial measures since huge amount of money from poor people of the State has been fraudulently transacted by the so-called marketing firms floated in Balasore and other districts of Orissa,” said Mr. Ray. Mr. Ray however, denied that the release of Khan on bail is going to dampen the spirit of the police or hamper the investigation in future. “The accused has been directed by the court to cooperate with the investigating police,” he added saying that the crime branch after taking up the case in September this year has completed over 70 percent of the investigation and is going to submit the charge-sheet soon.

The IG said three persons were earlier arrested in seven cases registered in this connection and about Rs 191 crore transacted by these “fly-by-night” operators has been frozen so far. He did not rule out of some more arrests. Mr. Ray said huge public money had been collected by these firms through its branches in Orissa and transferred to main accounts of these firms located in Kanpur, Mumbai and New Delhi. “There are evidences that over Rs 100 crore from various branches of these firms have been transferred to the account of ‘Great Entertainment’, which is the funding agency of Shadow Pictures”, the IG said.

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