14 EPFO employees get five-year RI for fraudulent withdrawls

A special CBI court here awarded five years rigorous imprisonment to 14 people from the Employees Provident Fund Office (EPFO) and one year RI to another besides imposing a total fine of 25.53 lakh on them for fraudulently withdrawing money in the name of unknown persons thus causing losses to the tune of over Rs 22 lakh to the EPFO.
The sentence was awarded by the court of Special CBI judge, Manoj Kumar Shrivastava yesterday.
The case was registered by the CBI under sections 120-B, 419, 420, 467, 468, 471 and 477-A and Section 13(1)(d) of Prevention of Corruption Act, 1988 in January 2006 in this regard against Gajendra Singh Chouhan, a Lower Division Clerk (LDC), a CBI release said.

It was alleged that Chouhan during the period 2000-02 entered into a criminal conspiracy with an unknown official of EPFO as well as private persons and committed the offence of forgery, cheating and impersonation in respect of fraudulent withdrawal of Provident Fund claims in the name of fake persons.
After the probe, CBI filed a chargesheet in the court following which the trial began.
Employees Gajendra Singh Chouhan, Pratap Singh, Usha Naik, RD Paranjape, Ramchandra, A K Shrivastava, Rajendra Singh Thakur, Balram Keshav Singh, Rajesh Bhalekar, Rekha Chouhan, Rajesh Kumawat, Dushyant Sonwane, Ghanshyam Dave and Maneesh Gaur were sentenced to five years RI and were imposed with a fine of Rs 35,000 each under various sections of the IPC.

In case of default, they will have to undergo additional one year RI, the CBI release said.
Another employee Ramesh Haldar was awarded an RI of one year and a fine of Rs 5000. In case of default he will have to undergo three months additional RI, it said adding the total amount of fine imposed on all the 15 persons was Rs 25,53,000 and all sentences shall run concurrently.