Rajkot: Bringing a 25-year-old criminal case to a close, a court convicted a former Bank of Baroda officer for orchestrating an embezzlement scheme, sentencing him to three years of simple imprisonment considering his age.Additional judicial magistrate first class DD Shah found Pankaj Mehta, 75, guilty of criminal breach of trust, cheating and forgery.The charges date back to Mehta’s tenure as a loan officer at the Bank of Baroda’s Mandvi Chowk branch between April 1998 and May 12, 1999. Primary investigation revealed that Mehta created bogus loan accounts, forged signatures and wrote fraudulent cheques to illegally withdraw Rs 8.55 lakh from the bank. During the trial, the prosecution revealed that Mehta made 17 dummy debit entries totalling Rs 16.40 lakh, ultimately defrauding the bank.“A major breakthrough in the case was a written confession Mehta submitted to the bank’s regional manager in June 2000, where he admitted to the financial misappropriation. Following an internal departmental inquiry into the bogus loan accounts and his unauthorised actions, the bank dismissed him from service,” said assistant public prosecutor S L Joshi.Handwriting and photography experts from the state’s handwriting bureau were also brought in to examine the disputed documents, cheques and debit vouchers.Despite the defence’s plea for leniency under the Probation of Offenders Act, citing Mehta’s age, the prosecution argued that stealing public funds as a bank official is a serious crime that requires a stringent precedent.The court convicted Mehta under Sections 409 (criminal breach of trust by a public servant or banker), 465 (forgery), 467 (forgery of valuable security), 468 (forgery for the purpose of cheating) and 471 (using forged documents as genuine) of the Indian Penal Code.
