Mumbai: A special court has sentenced four persons, including a 70-year-old former branch head of the State Bank of India (SBI), for defrauding the bank of Rs. 98 lakhs in 1997-98.
The court has imposed heavy fines on the men - two of them in their fifties and other two in their seventies. While the septuagenarian banker Abid Vohra was sentenced to four years and a fine of over Rs. 3 lakhs, his co-accused, Ashok Bhansali - who benefitted the most from the fraud, was directed to pay over Rs. 3 crores and was sentenced to suffer five years of imprisonment. Two other co-accused - Rizwan Patel, 57 and Sadiq Patel, 78, were sentenced to three years in jail and a fine of over Rs. 30 lakhs each.
Vohra, who was then the branch manager of the public sector bank, had cleared cheques though there were not sufficient funds in the accounts of the accused. There are a total of 10 accused in the case, however, three have died and two are absconding. The court acquitted one person.
Special Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) judge SU Wadgaonkar said in his order while deciding the quantum of punishment for the accused, that in the year 1997-1998 they committed a pure fraud on SBI on the basis of fictitious documents and there was no security with the bank to recover the amount as the documents were fictitious. The court noted that the value of the fraud as of date is around Rs. 8 to Rs. 10 crores.
Regarding the former banker Vohra, Judge Wadgankar said he was receiving an attractive salary from a nationalised bank and with a dishonest intention, allowed the accused to cause a huge loss to public money. It also observed that economic offences have serious consequences to the economy and the financial health of the country and are a grave offence. “It does not affect just one individual but the victim is the national economy,” the judgement said.
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