Bharti AXA Life - India

A local court on Thursday dismissed the anticipatory bail plea of chief executive officer and vice-president of Bharti AXA Life Insurance company in a case of cheating of over Rs 14 lakh.
Sandeep Ghosh, 47, a resident of Mumbai, is the chief executive officer, while Gaurav Bhatia, 42, a resident of New Delhi, is the vice-president of the insurance company.


PD Joshi, a resident of Panchkula’s Sector 9, got registered a FIR with the Sector 5 police complaining that he was trapped by telecallers impersonating as IRDA chairman, insurance complaint officers, bank officers and tax officers, taking huge money from him through cheques by showing him the fear of income tax raids. He alleged that telecallers kept him in the dark for a long time and when he realised that he was being taken for a ride, he submitted the complaint on March 3, 2014, at the branch office of Bharti AXA Life Insurance in Sector 34, Chandigarh. The complaint was rejected on June 7, 2014, Joshi said.


As many as eight life insurance policies were issued in Joshi and his relatives’ names involving a sum of Rs 14.29 lakh. He claimed that his annual income in the policies was shown as different, pointing towards violation of guidelines. He alleged that the company officials were hand-in-glove with the brokers and they sold him insurance policies under a criminal conspiracy.


Both the CEO and vicepresident of Bharti AXA Life Insurance submitted that there were no specific allegations against them and had been falsely implicated.


The court ruled, “…at this stage, this court is mainly to see to whether petitioners are entitled to concession of prearrest bail and this court is not required to hold mini-trial for deciding the case of bail applications. The court is mainly concerned with a prima-facie case and as per allegations of the prosecution against the petitioners, to my mind, the allegations against the petitioners are very serious in nature. I do not find any merit for grant of concession of pre-arrest bail in favour of the petitioners as matter requires a deep probe.”