The Supreme Court of India has ordered Arvind Dham, the former chairperson of the Amtek Group, to surrender and go to jail by 10 AM on April 8. This action is related to a major ₹2,700 crore bank loan fraud case, in which he has been accused of taking huge loans from public sector banks and misusing them.
Arvind Dham had approached the court with a request to either extend his time to surrender or grant him temporary bail so that he could undergo an angiography test for a heart condition. However, the judges were not satisfied with this plea. The bench, led by Chief Justice Sanjiv Khanna along with Justices Sanjay Kumar and K. V. Viswanathan, said that Dham had already undergone the angiography test recently, and they questioned why he needed to do it again. The court made it clear that they would not support such delays and told him firmly to surrender.
The court, however, allowed a small relief. After surrendering, Arvind Dham can be taken to a private hospital of his choice for the medical test. But he will have to pay for all the costs himself. If doctors suggest that surgery is needed after the angiography, he can then request interim bail again for further treatment. During the hearing, senior advocate Kapil Sibal, who was representing Dham, requested that the money laundering trial by the Enforcement Directorate (ED) be paused so that Dham could get proper medical treatment. He assured the court that if no surgery is advised, Dham would surrender. But the court rejected this and asked him to surrender first.
This case goes back to a major financial scam. Amtek Group, once a large company involved in automobile parts manufacturing, took thousands of crores in loans from banks. According to the Enforcement Directorate (ED), instead of using the loans properly, the money was diverted illegally, causing heavy losses to banks like IDBI Bank and Bank of Maharashtra. The ED started investigating the case under the Prevention of Money Laundering Act (PMLA) after getting directions from the Supreme Court in February 2024. Dham was arrested in July 2023, and a chargesheet was filed against him in September.
As part of the investigation, the ED has so far attached assets worth over ₹5,115 crore. These include 145 acres of land in Rajasthan and Punjab, properties in Delhi-NCR worth ₹342 crore, and bank balances and fixed deposits worth ₹112.5 crore. Recently, the ED attached an additional ₹550 crore worth of assets linked to Dham and Amtek Group companies. The agency believes these assets were directly bought using money gained through fraudulent loans. Many of these assets were owned either by Dham himself or held under the names of companies and people who helped him obtain the loans.
The ED also revealed that Amtek Group’s financial records were manipulated to look stronger than they actually were. These false numbers were used to get even more loans from banks. Eventually, when the company couldn’t repay the money, it went into insolvency (bankruptcy), and banks had to accept losses of more than 80% on the loans. This caused major damage to public sector banks.
Several criminal cases under the Indian Penal Code and Prevention of Corruption Act have also been filed by the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI), based on complaints by the affected banks. The case has become one of the significant examples of corporate fraud and financial mismanagement in India.
