The Madras High Court Bench here on Tuesday refused to grant anticipatory bail to M.P. Venkatakrishnan, Assistant Manager (Legal) of HDFC Bank in Tirunelveli district, in two cases registered against him for defrauding the bank to the tune of several lakh of rupees and cancelled the advance bail granted by the Tirunelveli Principal Sessions Court in the third case.
Justice V.M. Velumani dismissed the two anticipatory bail applications filed by the lawyer and allowed a cancellation of advance bail application moved by the bank on the ground that the accused had not even complied with the condition laid down by the Sessions Court on April 28 to report before the Inspector of Tirunelveli City Crime Branch (CCB) every day for a month.
“Allegations against the petitioner are that he is the mastermind in hatching the plan to defraud the bank. He actively participated in forgery and stealthily removed all the loan documents by using the password to which only authorised employees had access… Hence, the judgments relied on by the learned counsel for the petitioner are not applicable to the facts of the present cases,” the judge said.
She pointed out that one of the complaints related to sanctioning of housing loan of Rs.42 lakh to an aged couple on the basis of certain land provided by them as security.
The bank had reportedly found that the amount had been sanctioned following collusion between the advance bail petitioner, a receptionist of the bank, her father and a few other accomplices by submitting forged documents.
The second case was on the charge of having misused access granted to him to certain electronic records in his capacity as an employee of the bank and helped one of his accomplices to withdraw a housing loan of Rs.25 lakh which had been actually sanctioned by the bank to another person hailing from Erwadi in Ramanathapuram district and employed in Saudi Arabia.
