Even as nervous customers gathered outside some of the closed outlets of Goodwin Jewellers in Maharashtra's Thane and Palghar districts to seek refund of their investments, a video surfaced on social media where the jewellery chain owners can be seen telling affected people that their money was "safe" and promised to return it.
The firm's owners and whole-time directors, A.M. Sunilkumar and A.M. Sudheeshkumar, who have been gone untraceable since last week, urged customers to have "faith" in them and claimed there was a "calculative move by some forces" to defame them and make their business suffer. The Thane Police is the process of issuing lookout notices against the owners of Goodwin Jewellers.
Both brothers hail from Kerala, where they have a shop in Thrissur. Apart from the 12 branches in India, Goodwin Jewellers has presence in Dubai and Kuwait, its website claimed. "We are examining the video," senior inspector S P Aahera, from Dombivali police station in Thane, said.
In the video, Sunilkumar and Sudheshkumar, speaking in Malayalam (most of the customers are people from Kerala living in Maharashtra), said they have not fled the country.
In the video message, the owners narrated their sufferings since the last one year and declared that the investments of customers were "safe" with them. Though the company may be low on liquidity, Sunilkumar and Sudheshkumar said, they have sufficient assets with them to fulfil their commitments.
The trouble started with the Pune branch sometime back when a builder and another person made a demand of Rs 50 crore from them, the duo said. "When we expressed our inability to make the payment they created trouble for us," the brothers added. The duo said they were already facing legal issues and did not not want to add to their woes, and hence suspended the operations of their outlets.
As regards the Dombivali outlet sealed by the police, they said it can be resorted to them only after court orders. Sunilkumar and Sudheshkumar said they were confident of staging a comeback within the next six months.
They appealed to people not to panic and said they would pay back all the investments as promised.
The Goodwin group has outlets in Vashi (Navi Mumbai), Thane city, Dombivali, Ambernath, Mira Road (Thane district), Chembur (Mumbai), Chinchwad, Bund Garden and Pimpri (Pune).
The fraud comes close on the heels of the multi-crore scam at Mumbai-based PMC Bank, which has affected thousands of depositors.
The police in Palghar district on Monday also booked the jewellery firm owners under the Maharashtra Protection of Interests of Depositors in Financial Establishments (MPID) Act, which has provisions for stringent action against those cheating customers.
Since the closure of the Goodwin outlets last week, angry investors, ranging from middle class to lower income groups like autorickshaw drivers and domestic helps, have been gathering outside the jewellery stores in a desperate bid to get their money back.
They have also been asking the police about progress made in the probe and on chances of getting their hard-earned money back.
(With PTI inputs)
