Ghaziabad: Fifteen years on, a special court has framed charges against three officials of Punjab National Bank (PNB) under various provisions for cheating, fraud and criminal conspiracy.The case pertains to loans amounting to over Rs 5 crore, which were sanctioned in 2011 to a couple — Sanjeev Dixit and Sheetal Sharma. The matter was registered with CBI ACB police station the same year.Special CBI court Judge (Prevention of Corruption) Anand Prakash Singh on Tuesday charged the three officials of the Ghaziabad’s Nehru Nagar branch — Rajendra Singh Chauhan, Raghavendra Swaroop Bhatnagar and Manoj Kumar — under various IPC sections and the Prevention of Corruption Act for sanctioning loans without following proper norms and thus causing wrongful gain to themselves and wrongful loss to the public bank/govt.The then chief manager-cum-sanctioning officer Chauhan, then deputy manager/processing officer Bhatnagar and then manager/recommending officer Kumar have been charged under Section 120B (criminal conspiracy) read with sections 406 (criminal breach of trust), 419 (cheating by personation), 420 (cheating and dishonestly inducing the delivery of property, covering fraud, forgery, and breach of trust), 467 (forgery of valuable securities, wills, or authorities to transfer property), 468 (forgery committed specifically for the purpose of cheating) and 471 (fraudulent or dishonest use of a forged document or electronic record as genuine) of the Indian Penal Code and Section 13(2) r/w 13(1)(d) of the Prevention of Corruption Act.According to the complaint, Sanjeev submitted a loan application to PNB Nehru Nagar branch on May 9, 2011 for a cash credit (CC) limit — short-term, revolving credit facility — of Rs 3.5 crore. The said loan application was processed at the branch level by a team consisting of Bhatnagar, Kumar and Chauhan. The borrower’s property in New Delhi — C-193, Vivek Vihar — was mortgaged by the bank and a CC limit of Rs 3.50 crore was sanctioned on May 25.Dixit, who is also named as a co-accused in the case, obtained the loan (CC facility) by submitting two forged sale deeds for the property. The bank officials failed to follow proper bank procedures and did not conduct due diligence as required by bank regulations or verify the authenticity of the sale deeds.Rs 1,97,48,800 was transferred from the CC accounts to the account of M/s Jagdamba Crane Services, registered in the name of one Radheshyam Sharma, who is the uncle of Sheetal, loanee Dixit’s wife. The court observed that the said amount was used to purchase a property located in Sector 5, Vasundhara, Ghaziabad.Sheetal, also a co-accused in the case, submitted another loan application to PNB Nehru Nagar on June 19, 2011, seeking a Rs 2 crore credit limit. The said loan application was also processed at the branch level by the same bank officials. The borrower (Sheetal) mortgaged a house in Vasundhara against the said loan and obtained a credit limit of Rs 2 crore from the bank. The said property was not in the name of Sanjeev and its sale deed was found to be forged. Bank officials processed the documents and sanctioned the loan without proper verification and due diligence, entering into a criminal conspiracy with the private individuals, with the intention of causing wrongful gain to themselves and loss to the bank.Having gone through the details of the investigation, the court said Chauhan being a public servant — along with co-accused Bhatnagar and Kumar — abused their official position as public servants, sanctioned a loan of Rs 3.50 crore to the co-accused Sanjeev and another loan of Rs 2 crore to Sheetal without following proper norms, thereby causing wrongful loss to the bank and wrongful gain to the co-accused.“You have thus committed an offence punishable under Section 13(2) read with 13(1)(d) of the Prevention of Corruption Act, 1988. You are hereby ordered to be tried by this court on the aforesaid charges,” the court ruled.
