Bank official gets seven years' RI for Rs 16-lakh fraud

4 Jun, 2008, 2017 hrs IST, PTI

NEW DELHI: A Delhi court on Wednesday sentenced a Bank of Baroda official to seven years' rigorous imprisonment (RI) for duping the bank of Rs 16 lakh by opening fictitious accounts in his associate's name.

Chief Metropolitan Magistrate Sanjeev Jain convicted John W M R for cheating and slapped a fine of Rs 5.50 lakh on him.

John was also held guilty under various sections of the IPC including 120-B (Criminal conspiracy) and 467 (Forgery for the purpose of cheating).

The court also sentenced his associates Kamlesh Verma, another bank employee, and Kiranjit Sant to four years' RI for helping him in committing the crime. The court slapped a fine of Rs 1.5 lakh each on them.

According to the CBI, John, being the officer-in-charge of the BoB at RML Hospital had allegedly hatched a criminal conspiracy with his colleague Verma and Sant and opened a fictitious account in the latter's name.

John allegedly made fictitious credit entries and withdrew Rs 16 lakh from an account between October 1986 to September 1988 from the BoB and later deposited the amount in Sant's savings account in connivance with Verma, the CBI alleged.

In the ten-page chargesheet, the CBI alleged that John had a prime motive to cheat the BoB.

After getting a complaint from M S Khanna, the Deputy General Manager of the BoB, the probe agency registered a case
against the accused persons on April 12, 1990.

The prosecution produced a total of 23 witnesses to prove its case against the convicts. The court had framed charges against them on September 21 2000.

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