Following the court judgement, Maharashtra Minister Radhakrishna Vikhe Patil responded to a complaint against him on Wednesday, stating that the Supreme Court had already ruled out a criminal crime in 2019 in a case involving a sugar mill. In 2004, Patil was charged with using falsified papers to get loans in farmers’ names.

Following a court order, a formal complaint was filed against Patil and 53 other people, including directors of a sugar factory, at the Loni police station in the Ahilyanagar district on Monday.

What Does Patil’s Case Involve?

The FIR claims that the Water Resources Minister used falsified papers to get loans totalling about Rs 9 crore in farmers’ names. According to him, the sugar mill is prepared to handle any further investigation into the issue.

“The Supreme Court made it plain in 2019 that no criminal crime was proven in this matter after the filing of the investigation report pertaining to the Padma Shri Dr. Vithalrao Vikhe Patil Cooperative Sugar Factory. As a result, we are not worried or having any problems with it. “The case is closed from our point of view,” he continued.

“However, we are fully prepared to face any new inquiry that is to be conducted,” Vikhe Patil said in a statement. After a decade, he accused his political rivals of “digging up” the 2004 case.

“The Supreme Court, High Court, and municipal court all had hearings on the case. The Supreme Court declared in 2019 that no criminal crime had been committed in the case after hearing the report from the High Court-appointed investigation officer and rejected the petition,” he said.

Speaking about the present state of the case, Vikhe Patil said that the FIR was filed after the Supreme Court’s upholding of the Rahata court magistrate’s ruling under section 156(3).

“The Supreme Court made it plain in its March 2025 ruling that the plant management and others should not be subjected to coercive measures that would put them through excessive hardship. This has given the situation total clarity,” the BJP leader said.

The Complainant’s Words?

The lawsuit states that the irregularity happened in 2004. Loan proposals were purportedly produced by the mill’s directors and then-chairman using fictitious papers in the names of participating farmers. They reportedly obtained loans of Rs 3.11 crore and Rs 5.74 crore with the assistance of bank personnel.

The loan sums, however, were never credited to the farmers’ accounts whose names the bids had been made under. According to the allegation, bank employees and sugar mill authorities instead embezzled the funds.