The Madras High Court acquitted the then Assistant Manager of a nationalised bank here who was sentenced to undergo one year imprisonment each in two cases.
The CBI case against N. Sridhar was that while working in the Indian Bank, T.Nagar, he allegedly did fraudulent transactions in his savings bank and loan account by misusing the password of another officer of the bank. Charge sheets were filed against Mr. Sridhar before the Special Court, Chennai, for offences of forgery, falsification of accounts and cheating under the Prevention of Corruption Act.
The Special Court awarded the punishment on November 30, 2006. Hence, Mr. Sridhar filed the present appeal through counsel S.P. Sudalaiyandi.
In his common judgment, Justice R. Mala said even though the sanction order was valid and two charge sheets could be filed based on a single FIR, as per the exhibits, the appellant’s statement was not a voluntary one. Non-seizure of housing and vehicle loan registers and audit report on which basis the FIR was registered was fatal to the prosecution case. Each and every staff member had been provided with user ID and password and they were directed to change their passwords once in 15 days. If an officer had disclosed his user ID and password to another, he was responsible for that action. The prosecution had miserably failed to prove the offences against the appellant beyond reasonable doubt, Ms. Justice Mala said.
