New Delhi: Rajya Sabha MP and Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) leader Subramanian Swamy Monday retweeted a photograph of a cheque of Rs 98 crore, allegedly signed by fugitive diamantaire Nirav Modi in favour of the ‘Indian National Congress’.
Modi, currently in the UK, is wanted by the Indian government for scamming Punjab National Bank (PNB) of around Rs 14,000 crore.
Swamy retweeted the photograph to his 7.79 million Twitter followers without comment, though the original tweet tags him and says, “FM can check from Bank n confirm Account No 914010006904607 or 914010006904007.”
The alleged ‘cheque’ is dated for 25 September 2011.
@Swamy39 Sir, 98Cr to Cong by Neerav Modi by Cheque on 25.09.2011.
2. FM can check from Bank n confirm
Account No
914010006904607
or
914010006904007 https://t.co/Fm9ZQD8JnK
— Col A K Tiwari?? (@colkt) April 1, 2019
So far, the tweet has been retweeted almost 400 times, with over 560 likes.
Although Swamy tweeted it Monday, the same picture had begun doing the rounds first in March 2018, soon after news of the Nirav Modi scam first came to light.
The BJP government has been under the scanner after the fraud was exposed under its reign.
‘Ninenty eight crores’
However, a closer look at the cheque reveals it’s fake. The amount written on the cheque is “Ninenty eight crores only” — a glaring spelling error. It also hasn’t been crossed in the corner, and the name under the signature, which reads ‘Nirav Modi’, is obscured.
The account branch on the cheque is from Lakhimpur in Assam. The account details, when checked on the Axis bank portal, are not linked to the fugitive jeweller but to someone named ‘Thapa’.
Other fake cheques
A similar fake cheque dated 8 November 2016 was doing the rounds on social media after liquor baron Vijay Mallya fled the country on counts of fraud in early 2016.
At the time, the fake cheque, signed by ‘Vijay Mallya’, was shown to be written in favour of the “Bhartiya Janata Party” — instead of “Bharatiya Janata Party” — for Rs 35 crore.
Mallya owes Indian banks over Rs 9,000 crore in unpaid loans.
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