A senior Delhi Police officer claimed on Wednesday that the Economic Offences Wing had arrested a top former government official for cheating and theft to the tune of around Rs 30 crore. Ajay Khera, the accused, retired from his position as Executive Director (Commercial) at Central Warehousing Corporation.
The Special Commissioner of Police Ravinder Kumar Yadav provided the facts, stating that the complainant, in this case, is the Director of Seagull Maritime Agencies Pvt. Ltd., an Indian freight forwarding company that opened a branch in the United States in 2010. The Special CP added that “The accused ( of Group Company), who was working with the company as a legal adviser, suggested that the ex-promoters of Seagull hire his son, alleged Siddharth Khera, to look after the Seagull US branch,” the Special CP added.
As a result, accused Siddharth Khera was appointed as Business Development Manager at Seagull’s US division. However, Seagull’s revenue per year has slowly decreased from the highs of 2018 to a severe low in July 2021. The senior officer stated that the alleged suspects had registered two firms, Azure Freight & Logistics LLP (November 2020) and Azure International LLC (June 2020), and launched parallel operations by taking away Seagull’s clients through misrepresentation and forgery.
According to the police, the accused persons, in connivance with the employees of Seagull, forged bills of Lading, invoices, etc., and dishonestly funnelled payments made by the client of Seagull for shipments made by Seagull to the accounts of Azure International LLC.
According to the authorities, the accused further misrepresented to Seagull clients that Azure is one of the Seagull group firms and acquired orders from Seagull clients. They even changed the name of the shipper on the bills of lading from Seagull to Azure, despite the fact that Seagull was responsible for the order. The suspected individuals resigned while also replacing the original hard drives in their computers.
The official added that the accused caused the complainant company a wrongful loss of Rs 30 crore or more and themselves a wrongful gain. As a result, following a preliminary investigation, the police filed an FIR under any relevant sections of legislation at the Economic Offence Wing police station. On September 22, a squad led by Joint C.P. Chhaya Sharma arrested the accused Khera and put him into police custody.
