The Delhi high court has asked a nationalised bank to deposit `45 lakhs, awarded as damages in an illegal fund transfer case, till the final disposal of its appeal.
The court order came on an appeal filed by PNB against the adjudicating officer’s order on the complaint of Poona Auto Ancillaries under the Information and Technology Act alleging fraudulent transfer of funds from its current account with the bank’s Pune branch.
The court stayed the Maharashtra adjudicating officer’s February 25 order, which asked Punjab National Bank (PNB) to pay `45 lakhs to Poona Auto Ancillaries as a fraudster transferred `80.10 lakhs from the account of the MD of the Pune-based firm.
The vacation bench of Justice Sanjeev Sachdeva asked the bank to deposit the damages amount with the Registrar General of the high court till the final disposal of its appeal. Issuing notices to the ministries of commerce and information and technology, the court sought their replies by August 13. The Centre’s counsel Sumit Pushkarna accepted the notices.
According to the complainant company, the amounts were transferred in 40 transactions of `2 lakhs each and one transaction of `10,000 in quick successions. In the complaint, it was also alleged that out of `80.10 lakhs, `40 lakhs were transferred to the account of another company, which had its account with PNB Mulund.
In addition, `20 lakhs were transferred to another company which had the account with the bank’s Bhavnagar branch in Gujarat. Another `60,000 were transferred to a Syndicate Bank branch in Mumbai in favour of a different company.
Filing the appeal before the high court, the bank claimed that it was not at fault as the company had shared the account password with its employees and the same was hacked but it was not leaked by the bank.