2 bank officials, 5 others get jail in Rs 1.75 crore fraud

A Delhi court has awarded varying jail terms of one-and-a half-years to four years to seven convicts, including two senior retired bank officials, for defrauding a PSU bank of Rs 1.75 crore.
Special CBI Judge Sanjeev Aggarwal said the allegations against the convicts were "grave and serious" in nature and they had conspired and cheated Union bank of India by inducing it to sanction a loan for Rs 2.95 crore based upon forged and fabricated documents.
The court sentenced Revathy Ranjan Roy, the then Chief Manager of the bank's Asaf Ali Road branch here, and Devender Kumar Balani, the then senior manager of the branch, to two-and-a half-years and one-and-a half-years prison term respectively.

It also awarded three years imprisonment to Ram Niwas Singhal, four years jail each to his two sons -- Kamal Kumar Singhal and Neeraj Singhal-- while the third son Vijay Singhal was sentenced to one-and-a half-years imprisonment.
Singhals' employee Kailash Garg was sentenced to one-and-a half-years jail by the court.
Ram Singhal and his sons Kamal and Neeraj were the directors of the firm, Raj Fibres Pvt Ltd, which was sanctioned a loan of Rs 2.95 crore out of which Rs 1.75 crore was disbursed by Union Bank of India.

"For this purpose, amount of term loan (Rs 1.75 crore) was siphoned off into the fake account opened in the name of G M Engineering by accused no. 4 (Kailash) from which the said money was diverted into two different accounts of M/s Matu Ram Shiv Charan Dass and M/s M S Traders from where it was withdrawn by way of self cheques," the court said.

The seven persons were convicted for various offences under IPC, including criminal conspiracy, cheating, forgery, using forged documents as genuine and under relevants sections of the Prevention of Corruption Act.
The court held it was crystal clear that 62-year-old convict Ram Singhal was the kingpin of the conspiracy along with his sons Neeraj and Kamal.