Mallya loan default case: Ex-IDBI Bank chairman among 8 arrested

CBI on Monday arrested a former chairman and three other ex-officials of IDBI Bank along with four former executives of Kingfisher airlines in connection with the Vijay Mallya loan default case.

Those arrested include the then Chairman of IDBI Bank Yogesh Aggarwal and former CFO of now-defunct Kingfisher Airlines A Raghunathan, CBI sources said.

They said three more former executives of the airlines and three more former officials of IDBI Bank were also taken into custody. The arrests were followed by searches at 11 places including Mallya's residence here, three floors of UB towers in Bengaluru and residences of Aggarwal and Raghunathan among others.

UB Group issued a statement in Bengaluru confirming the visit of CBI team. "A CBI team visited the UB Group offices in Bangalore today and we are fully cooperation with them," a UB group spokesperson said. 

CBI sources said the purported mastermind ex-Deputy Managing Director B K Batra was arrested late in the night and will be produced before designated court in Mumbai tomorrow.

Sources said three more former executives of the airlines and three more former officials of IDBI Bank were also taken into custody. Other former IDBI executives arrested by CBI include O V Bundellu, S K V Srinivasan, R S Sridhar, they said.

The sources said besides former CFO of Kingfisher Airlines, three more former executives Shailesh Borke, A C Shah and Amit Nadkarni were also arrested.

The arrests were followed by searches at 11 places including Vijay Mallya's residence here, three floors of UB towers in Bengaluru, residences of Aggarwal and Raghunathan among others.

The arrests have been made from multiple cities. While Raghunathan was arrested in Mumbai, Aggarwal was taken into custody from Gurgaon, the sources said.

CBI had registered a case against Mallya, Director of defunct Kingfisher Airlines; the company; A Raghunathan, Chief Financial Officer of the Airlines; and unknown officials of IDBI Bank.

The loan was allegedly sanctioned in violation of norms regarding credit limits. The sources said there was no need for the bank to take the exposure outside the  consortium.

"It was first exposure to the bank. There was no need for the bank to take the exposure outside the consortium when already other loans were getting stressed," a senior CBI official, probing the matter, had earlier said.