BharatPe Co-founder Ashneer Grover and Wife Stopped at Delhi Airport – Learn Why!

BharatPe co-founder Ashneer Grover and his wife Madhuri Jain were stopped from a New York flight due to an EOW lookout circular due to an ongoing fraud investigation. Though they were detained but not formally arrested, instructed to join the probe next week.

lookout circular was issued by the EOW against the two for alleged fraud at BharatPe!

Ashneer Grover, who is the former managing director at BharatPe, and his wife Madhuri Jain were stopped at the Indira Gandhi International Airport Thursday evening. They were traveling to New York.

In December 2022, BharatPe filed a criminal complaint against Grover, his wife, and her family members. The accusation was of perpetrating a ₹81.28 crore fraud. One of the allegations is of ₹7.6 crore that BharatPe paid to eight HR consultants linked to the accused persons between 2018 and 2021.

In the FIR, the EOW had named Ashneer Grover, his wife Madhuri Jain Grover, and family members, including Deepak Gupta, Suresh Jain, and Shwetank Jain. BharatPe had filed a criminal complaint in 2022 with the EOW mentioning 17 charges. That includes embezzlement, forgery, and criminal breach of trust. If proven guilty, the Grovers can imprisoned for up to ten years. 

“These invoices were provided by the vendors and the complainant company to the investigating agency, which established that these fake invoices were created at a later stage after the opening of bank accounts of these firms, These firms were established and their bank accounts were opened only to siphon off funds and for causing wrongful gain to the alleged persons.” says the status report submitted by EOW to the Delhi High Court. “In all these eight alleged firms, around 7.60 crore was found credited, almost all the credit entries coming from complainant company RIPL” was also added.

But what did Ashneer Grover say?

In a post on X, Ashneer Grover said, “I had not received any communication or summon from EOW since FIR in May till 8 am today November 17th (7 hours after returning from the airport). I was going to the US from 16-23 November. At immigration, they said LoC laga hua hai sir – EOW se check kar ke batate hai. I found it strange as have traveled 4 times internationally since the FIR was filed in May – never been a problem and I had not even been summoned once. Flight left in the meantime anyway – EOW folks directed Immigration to let us out so that we could return home. Today morning EOW summon was home delivered – will cooperate as always.”

“They were detained before security check and asked to return to their Delhi residence and join the probe at the EOW office at Mandir Marg next week,” said Sindhu Pillai, joint commissioner of police.