The Registrars of Companies in 13 states across the country have initiated legal actions including registration of criminal case against 117 companies which allegedly have violated different provisions of the Companies Act, 1956 and closed down their operations leaving millions of investors in the lurch.

Gujarat tops the list with 33 vanishing companies, while RoCs of  Delhi and Haryana have initiated legal actions against 27 and 10 companies, respectively.

Interestingly from Gujarat, Topline Shoes Limited, a Vadodara-based company in which former Indian cricket skipper Sunil M Gavaskar is one of the directors, is featured in the list of vanishing companies against whom legal actions have been initiated by the RoC, Ahmedabad.

Even a case for violation of articles 63, 68 and 628 of the Companies Act has been registered against Topline Shoes by the RoC, Ahmedabad which is pending in a Court at Vadodara.

"Gavaskar was one of the directors of Topline Shoes Ltd in which there were five other directors against whom also similar actions have been taken by us. Some of them are also prominent personalities like, Duleep Singh, H M G Murthy, Vinod B Mistry, a local industrialist," said a senior official of RoC, Ahmedabad.

The official said that charges against Topline Shoes is no different from the 32 other companies based in Gujarat of fleecing investors money via public issues.

However, repeated attempts to contact Gavaskar and the other five directors of the company prove futile. Even the office of the company at Alkapuri area in Vadodara does not exist.

Directors of all other companies heavily indicted by the RoCs in other parts of the country also did not respond in spite of several attempts to contact them.

Besides, Topline Shoes, three other prominent companies from Gujarat also have been put under DCA's action, like, Arrow Securities Limited, Maa Leafin and Capital Limited and Cromakem Limited.

Sources in Gujarat state police also have confirmed that a copy of the list of the vanishing companies already has been forwarded by the RoC's office in Ahmedabad for 'proper legal action' to be initiated by the Criminal Investigation Department's specialised Economic Offences Cell.

Said Senior Superintendent of Police, Economic Offences Cell, S G Bhati, "We have received the information from the concerned department and right now we are in process of deciding how to register the cases against the accused."

Most interestingly, lowest number of such cases have been reported from RoCs in Andhra Pradesh, Orissa and Karnataka, where one each case has been registered while four cases have been registered by the RoC, Kolkata, five cases have been registered by the RoC in Bihar, six cases in Kerala and seven cases with Coimbatore's RoC and eight each with the RoCs in Mumbai and Chennai.

Six cases have been registered against the vanishing companies based in Jalandhar.

"Most of the companies also have been accused of making statements, promises and forecasts in the prospectus released during IPO issues, which are false, deceptive, or misleading, with a view to induce persons to subscribe for shares in the company," said a DCA official.