Mumbai, July 11: The Mumbai-police has arrested Vipul Prabhat Maheshwari, one of the promoters of Vipul Securities who is alleged to have introduced Rs 22.19 crore worth of fake shares at the National Stock Exchange.

The Economic Offences Wing of the Mumbai-police which was investigating the case following a complaint lodged with it by NSE on July 5, arrested the accused late on Thursday evening.

The accused has been remanded to custody for a fortnight by the additional metropolitan magistrate of the 37th court, said police sources.

The value of 61 different securities introduced by the broker is about Rs 22.19 crore. Police sources do not rule out a further increase in the value of these securities as the objections from the companies are still flowing in. It is learnt that the accused has during interrogations revealed that he had merely struck the transactions on behalf of six of his clients and that they were responsible for introducing these shares. The police is on the look out for the six clients as well as for Vipul Maheshwari's father, Prabhat Maheshwari, who is believed to be the major shareholder in the securities outfit.

Interestingly, investigations by the police and NSE have revealed that a large amount of money which was shown as having been payed by Maheshwari to his clients was actually never debited from his account. "Prima facie there appears to have been a well thought out criminal conspiracy on the part of the accused and his companions to dupe the NSE of huge amount of money as it is the exchange which has had to make good the losses through its clearing corporation", said a police source.

"We expect to nab the others involved in the conspiracy and only then would be able to go about recovering the money from the accused", said the source. The introduction of the large amount of shares has come as a blow to NSE as this is the largest ever case in the short history of the exchange. In fact NSE officials say that this case was an eye opener for the country's largest bourse. Vipul Securities has already been declared a defaulter by NSE. "It was this case which was responsible for the exchange launching the pre-verification drive and more importantly the controversial decision of asking all its members to furnish personal indemnity bonds against defaults committed by virtue of introducing bad paper," said a top NSE official.