After spending 16-years facing an extended trial, four men, all in their late sixties and seventies, have been sentenced to three years in jail by a city court in which the then branch manager of Punjab National Bank (earlier known as the New Bank of India) with the connivance of three others cheated the bank of `57 lakhs.
Special judge V.K. Maheshwari, who refused to consider their old age while delivering the sentence, said, “They had committed a serious economic offence, (and hence,) no leniency be shown to them.”
Judge Maheshwari sentenced all the convicted men to three years in jail for misappropriating and duping the bank. The judge also imposed a fine of `20,000 on each.
According to the chargesheet, the incident happened in the year 1989-90, when the directors of the surgical firm Vipee Surgical Private Limited approached the New Bank of India (now PNB), submitting a loan application for setting up an Export Oriental Industrial Unit to manufacture latex examination and surgical gloves.
Accordingly, the then branch manager of New Bank of India, L.K. Bhasin, without proper investigation and overlooking the terms to sanction loan credit facility, approved the various loan applications amounting to `57 lakhs in a bargain for his pecuniary gain. The incident came to light after the bank received a complaint of misappropriation of funds. Later, during the investigation by the CBI it was revealed that the private firm directors R.S. Bishnoi, G.S. Tyagi and Anil Mahajan deceived the bank by diverting the loan amount from one person to other, instead of purchasing the machinery for which the loan was granted.