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• Mr. Mohan Lal Sehjpal was a director of Pearls Infrastructure Projects Limited ["PIPL"]. PIPL and Mr. Mohan Lal Sehjpal find mention inter alia in paragraphs 181 to 190, 194 and 196 to i. As far as the present applicants are concerned, they have been named as accused only in a supplementary charge sheet filed on 31.12.2021. A list of 265 witnesses and 307 documents has been filed alongwith the supplementary charge sheet.

j. The applicants were all arrested a few days prior to filing of the supplementary charge sheet, i.e. on 22.12.2021. Five other individuals were also arrested on the same day. The applicants were remanded to police custody for a period of two days [from 23.12.2021 to 25.12.2021], and have been in judicial custody since then. k. It is stated in the supplementary charge sheet that the investment plans offered by PGF and PACL were in the nature of a CIS defined under Section 11AA of the Securities and Exchange Board of India Act, 1992 and regulated by the Securities And Exchange Board of India (Collective Investment Schemes) Regulations, 1999. As the companies had not complied with the aforesaid Act and Regulations, the Securities and Exchange Board of India ["SEBI"] had passed orders against them. l. Upon a reading of the supplementary charge sheet, it is evident that the case made out against the present applicants is that they were involved in diversion of funds raised by PGF/PACL from their investors. In the case of Mr. Mohan Lal Sehjpal, the diversion was carried out through PIPL, of which he was a director. In the cases of the other applicants, the allegation is that companies controlled by them raised fake invoices against PGF/PACL for land development work which was never, in fact, executed. In the supplementary charge sheet, the roles of the six applicants herein have been summarised as follows:

c. The allegation of diversion of funds and transactions of the nature described in the supplementary charge sheet were revealed even at the stage of the original charge sheet. Some of the present applicants, like Mr. Praveen Kumar Agarwal and Mr. Mohan Lal Sehjpal, were, in fact, named in the original charge sheet itself. Although Mr. Rajesh Agarwal and Mr. Subhash Agarwal were not individually named, their company, i.e. ARSS, was named. Mr. Mathur submitted that the case made out against Mr. Praveen Kumar Agarwal in the supplementary charge sheet virtually paraphrases the narration contained in the original charge sheet. None of the persons named in the original charge sheet with regard to such allegations were arrested at any stage during the period of almost eight years since the FIR was first registered, and five and half years since the original charge sheet was filed. The other applicants are also accused of similar transactions.
Supra (note 4) [paragraphs 24 and 39] Supra (note 7) [paragraph 3] b. It is also noteworthy that the investigation has been going on for over eight years now and the original charge sheet was filed in the year 2016. Although the Special Court is justified in recording that investigation of complex financial transactions takes considerable time, the allegations against the present applicants have now been crystallized in the supplementary charge sheet filed on 31.12.2021. The allegation that the funds were diverted by PGF/PACL through third party concerns is adverted to in the original charge sheet filed in the year 2016. Several of the present applicants and their concerns were, in fact, referred to in the original charge sheet itself, but no necessity was felt to place them under arrest at any stage during the investigation.