BHOPAL: The Court of Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) on Wednesday convicted the senior branch manager, branch manager of Punjab Nation Bank and a middleman for taking bribe of Rs 20,000 to approve the Kisan Credit Card loan. The court has awarded three year imprisonment the officers and fine of Rs 10,000 each.
The Bhopal CBI branch had registered the case on a complaint lodged by Jaswant Singh against senior branch manager Vishnu Khandelwal and manager LP Sonkar, of Punjab National Bank, Ganjbasoda, Vidisha district along with Naresh Raghuvanshi, under section 120-B of the IPC and sections 7, 13(2) r/w 13 (1) (d) of the PC Act, 1988 on December 18, 2008.
The complainant accused Khandelwal and Sonkar of demanding bribe of Rs 20,000, 10 per cent of loan amount through Raghuvanshi as their agent for sanctioning a loan of Rs 2 lakh to the complainant’s brother Pooran Singh under KCC Scheme.
After negotiation, the amount of bribe was reduced to Rs 17,000.
A trap was laid and middleman Raghuvanshi was caught red-handed while accepting the bribe money of Rs 17,000 from complainant Singh on behalf of Khandelwal and Sonkar on December 19, 2008.
After completion of investigation, charge sheet was filed against the three accused on September 30, 2009 in the special court of CBI.
After completion of trial, the court convicted the accused on Wednesday and awarded the sentence of three year imprisonment and the penalty of Rs 10,000 to both the officers and two years imprisonment and fine of Rs 5,000 to Raghuvanshi.
