By Our Reporter
SHILLONG: The Shillong Bench of the Gauhati High Court has directed the Court of the Judicial Magistrate (CJM), Shillong to proceed with a fraud case against the officials of Vijaya Bank stating that the fraud committed by the bank officials in the Jeevan Nidhi Deposit (JND) Scheme started by the Vijaya Bank, amounted to a criminal breach of trust.
After a hearing conducted recently, the High Court held that as per the guidelines of the scheme, the bank was required to verify the entries in the deposit card with the register and sign the monthly deposit cards to be returned to the depositors. However, the same was not done by the bank.
The court held that the omission to perform these duties may have been done intentionally in collusion with the agent and was abetment of commission of criminal breach of trust.
The JND scheme was started for daily door-to-door collection of money for which the bank had appointed one Nilay Kumar Shyam as an agent for such collection. The depositors who claimed to have paid daily deposit amounts to the agent, upon maturity of deposit term discovered that the amounts had not been deposited into their respective accounts in Vijaya Bank.
One of the depositors, who claimed to have paid Rs 500 daily for 365 days, later discovered that only Rs 12,500 had been deposited in his account whereas the total should have been Rs 1,82,500. Another depositor who had paid Rs 36,500, discovered that only Rs 1000 has been deposited in his account.
When the matter was taken up with the bank, the management claimed complete ignorance of the matter and passed the buck to the agent.
Angered over the denial by the bank management, the depositors had filed a case against the bank management and subsequently, a petition was filed by the chairman, the managing director of the bank and the then branch manager against criminal proceedings initiated by the depositors.
After hearing the petition filed by the bank officials, the high court held that there is prima facie evidence punishable with section 107 (3) of IPC.
