Rs 12 cr misappropriation, but fine of only Rs 22 lakh!

NT Correspondent

Bengaluru: Two persons convicted o f misappropriating over Rs 12 crore from Vijaya Bank will have to pay only Rs 22 lakh as fine, apart from their prison sentence. The High Court upheld their conviction on some grounds while acquitting them on a few others.

Incidentally, the Central Bureau of Investigation, the respondent in the matter, had not filed an appeal seeking enhancement of the fine amount, as a result, the HC could not modify the amount of fine.

“For all the offences, the total amount of fine imposed by the trial court is Rs 60,00,000. Now that the accused No.1 is entitled to be acquitted of some of the offences and modification of sentence, the fine amount gets reduced to Rs 22,00,000, ” Justice Sreenivas Harish Kumar, noted in his judgement on the appeals filed by the two convicts.

The HC said that the trial court had imposed a meagre fine amount considering the tune of the misappropriation. But it could not do anything in the absence of an appeal by the CBI. “ Considering the amount of misappropriation to the tune of Rs 12, 22, 94,260, the fine imposed by the trial court appears to be less, but the respondent has not preferred appeal seeking enhancement. Hence the fine amount in respect of offences for which conviction is retained cannot be modified,” the HC said.

The appeals were filed by J Kannan and J Muralidharan. Two brothers, hailing from Madurai, Tamil Nadu. Kannan worked as an assistant manager at the Syndicate Bank , Yeshwantpur. Another accused Rama Naik, was the chief manager. The three were accused of misappropriating “funds to the tune of Rs 12, 22, 94, 260 by falsification of records andun authorised diversion of funds in order to derive pecuniary advantage to themselves.

They were charged under Sections 120B, 420, 409, 467, 471 and 477A of the Indian Penal Code (IPC) and Section 13(2), 13(1)(c) and (d) of the Prevention of Corruption (PC) Act. The trial court acquitted Rama Naik while convicting Kannan and Muralidharn on various counts. Muralidharan was convicted under sections 120B and 420 of the IPC while Kannan was convicted under sections 120B, 420, 468, 471 and 477A of IPC and PC Act.

After hearing their appeal, the HC acquitted Kannan for the offences under 120B (Criminal conspiracy), 420 (Cheating), 468 (Forgery) but upheld his conviction on the other grounds. Consequently, the fine amount imposed by the trial court got reduced from Rs 60 lakh to Rs 22 lakh.