The Enforcement Directorate on Thursday arrested businessman Parsamal Lodha from Mumbai, for converting over Rs 25 crores old currency into new notes.
- A controversial Kolkata-based real estate developer, Lodha has stakes in mining, finance, consultancy and restaurant firms.
- He is also know for his aggressive takeover of Peerless General Finance and Investment Company Limited, then India's largest non-banking financial institution, in 1991. It was alleged that Lodha was tasked by underworld don Dawood Ibrahim to threaten Peerless Chairman and Managing Director P C Sen to sell his majority stake in the firm to Lodha.
- Lodha is now the director of seven firms, including Peerless, and is registered with the Ministry of Corporate Affairs.
- Known as 'Extra floors Lodha' or 'Fiddler on the roof', Lodha was known to add extra floors to an existing property. His name cropped up in the Kolkata's Stephen Court fire case in 2010, where 43 people died. Even though he had denied his role in securing permission to build three additional floors illegally to the existing five of the building, but was absconding during the investigations.
- Lodha's daughter was married in a high-profile wedding that was attended by several politicians.