New Delhi, September 12
In order to settle the claims of lakhs of investors of the defunct Chandigarh-based Golden Forest Company expeditiously, the Supreme Court has directed a committee, appointed by it; to filter out the cases of such persons who were not genuine depositors but were allured by company’s agents even after closure of the business by it.

A Bench of Mr Justice Ashok Bhan and Mr Justice Markandey Katju directed Justice R N Agrawal Committee, not to entertain the claims passed on alleged deposits accepted by any agents after the closure of the business by the Golden Forest company in 2001 and till date.

“No claim without clear proof of deposit of money with the company shall be considered,” the court in a recent order, said.

The court also directed the committee that it would examine the title of the building in possession of Punjab College of Engineering and Technology at Mohali to determine whether it was also a property of the Golden Forest, given to it by M A Shah, an investor. If it belonged to the company, then the college would vacate it and hand over the building to the committee.

M A Shah was also directed to hand over other properties of the company in his possession to the committee within 15 days and the panel would be at liberty to approach the Deputy Commissioner, Mohali, to get such properties vacated with the help of the police, the court ordered.

The order would filter out at least 8.5 lakh such claims which were not genuine investments in the company but were in fact made by those who were allured by its agents to invest even after the company had closed its business and the agents were not working for it, advocate Varuna Bhandari Gugnani, who argued for the genuine investors, told The Tribune.

The claims made by such “false investors” was to the tune of Rs 400 crore for which the company could not be held liable and due to this the settlement of genuine the claims of genuine investors was also being delayed, she said.

The Golden Forest company, which had started its business of development of agriculture land and social forestry farms in 1987, had mobilised Rs 1037 crore till December 1997 from lakhs of investors mainly from Punjab, Haryana, Chandigarh, Uttranchal and Himachal Pradesh.

But the company had closed its business in 2001 after a large scale complaints by investors regarding violation of various provisions of investment rules and the Department of Company Affairs of Union Government initiated probe against it by Security Exchange Board of India.

Despite this, company’s agents continued to get the money from people in small towns and villages, which the company refused to recognise as its liability for their not being genuine investors.

The court directed that the committee would accept the claims of only those depositors who had original authenticated receipts issued by the company.

The committee was further directed to put depositors in small, medium and big category and orders regarding disbursement of the money to them would be passed only after the total amount from the sale of the properties of the company was received by the panel.