As many as 13 accused in the multi-crore scam involving officials of the Punjab National Bank (PNB) and the Corporation Bank, and advocates and partners of Shubham Hospital, Panchkula, deposed in the special CBI court of Jagdeep Jain on Friday. While the main accused, Sandeep Sharma, a partner in the Shubham Hospital and Diagnostic Centre in Sector 20, Panchkula, and Gita Ram Thakur, the former secretary of a housing society in Zirakpur were denied bail, the court granted bail to the others.

Several senior officials of the two banks are accused of sanctioning loans to Sandeep without proper documentation. Sandeep was earlier booked for possessing a fake degree in medicine.

The CBI had filed a chargesheet in the court last month after completing their investigation in the case.

It submitted three challans, nailing S Ramachandaran, the then manager of Corporation Bank’s main branch in Chandigarh, Sandeep and his wife Ranjana, both partners of the Shubham Hospital, Nageswara Rao, another Corporation Bank official, Suresh Kumar, the security officer of Sandeep, and Suresh’s friends Naresh Jhakhar and Mahinder Singh.

The chargesheet, which named Sandeep as the main accused, said the accused managed to secure crores of rupees as loans from the two banks on documents related to 23 flats in various societies of Panchkula. Investigations revealed that the papers of the flats were forged.

The chargesheet said during August 2006 to March 2007, the main branch of Corporation Bank provided four different credit facilities totalling Rs 146.15 lakh to Shubham Hospital and Diagnostic Centre under term, mortgage and home loans.

During December 2006 to March 2007, the bank had also sanctioned housing loans to the tune of Rs 138.85 lakh to 12 individuals for the purchase of flats from Sandeep in Bishanpura Cooperative Housing Society, Zirakpur.

Investigations by the CBI revealed that Sandeep had submitted forged share certificates, allotment letters and no-objection certificates with respect to the ownership of the 12 flats.

The PNB officials in the dock include chief manager S N Mahajan, senior manager R K Chaba and manager Shashi Bhushan Gupta. The PNB had allegedly sanctioned a loan of over Rs 2 crore to Sandeep without verifying documents.

Vikram Sharma, one of the accused, failed to appear in the court on Friday and was hence issued non-bailable warrants. The names of two advocates also feature in the chargesheet for giving wrong legal opinion in the allotment of flats.

It is alleged that Ramachandran had sanctioned a loan of Rs 50 lakh without proper verification of the documents. The details of the four flats that were offered as collateral were not mentioned anywhere, the investigators found.

Sandeep’s total asset value had been shown as Rs 268.5 lakh while it was actually only Rs 112.5 lakh. The application was processed by Nageswara Rao.

A similar operation was applied for the sanction of a mortgage loan of Rs 13.7 lakh, term loan of Rs 50 lakh and a home loan of Rs 25 lakh.

Geeta Ram Thakur, the authorised signatory as secretary of Bishanpura Cooperative House Building Society, had signed the agreements of the bank on the request of Sandeep, said the challan.

The fraud surfaced last year after the police had arrested Sandeep for possessing a fake doctor’s degree to run Shubham Hospital.