The Enforcement Directorate’s Mumbai zonal office searched seven residential and business premises and three bank lockers across Mumbai and Vadodara on August 25, in a money-laundering probe tied to an alleged Rs 160.55 crore bank loan fraud at Bilpower Limited, a transformer lamination and core manufacturer. According to ANI, the agency seized jewellery worth roughly Rs 12.20 crore and cash of about Rs 43.90 lakh, and froze two bank accounts and three lockers linked to the company’s promoters.
What the ED alleges
Bilpower had banked with the State Bank of India since 2005, drawing cash credit, working capital and term loan facilities. Per Loktej, the account was declared a non-performing asset in April 2012 with dues of Rs 160.55 crore outstanding, and the case moved through the NCLT insolvency process before the CBI filed a chargesheet in September 2024. The ED’s money-laundering investigation, which builds on that chargesheet, alleges the company routed funds through shell and bogus firms and obtained letters of credit on the strength of forged documents, with proceeds allegedly ending up with entities controlled by the promoter family: Rajendra Kumar, Suresh Kumar and Naresh Kumar Chaudhary.
Neither report specifies which of the seven raided addresses were in Vadodara versus Mumbai. But the city’s inclusion places a company with no obvious Gujarat manufacturing footprint squarely inside a national loan-fraud investigation, a reminder that PMLA searches increasingly follow money and family assets across state lines, not just the site of the original default.
What it means for Gujarat
For Vadodara residents, the immediate story isn’t a local business collapsing. It’s how thoroughly national financial-crime enforcement now reaches into the city when money trails lead there, regardless of where a company is headquartered or where its factories sit. Bank loan fraud cases of this vintage (the default dates to 2012) typically take a decade or more to reach the asset-seizure stage, illustrating how slowly India’s financial-crime machinery grinds even after insolvency and a CBI chargesheet are already on record.
What to watch
The ED can now move to provisionally attach the seized jewellery, cash and frozen accounts under PMLA, a step that typically follows within 180 days of a search. Whether any of the promoters face arrest, and whether further Vadodara-linked assets surface, will depend on how the agency’s asset-tracing proceeds from here.
This report was compiled and written with AI assistance from publicly reported sources, and reviewed for accuracy.