Former chairman and managing director of Indian Bank M Gopalakrishnan was sentenced on Monday to 14 years' rigorous imprisonment and fined Rs 70 lakh for causing a loss of more than Rs 8.7 crore to the public sector bank between 1987 and 1992. Gopalakrishnan sanctioned loans to a private company which was not eligible for such large funds. A special CBI court also convicted S V Shanmugasundaram, former assistant general manager of the bank. He was sentenced to 14 years' RI and ordered to pay a fine of Rs 80 lakh. Both were sentenced to two terms of seven years each on two counts, and the judge ordered that these run one after another, making it a 14-year term. Both, on bail until now, were taken to prison immediately after special judge S Rangaraju delivered his 110-page judgment. However, three other accused - Geetha Vohra, Yeshpal Kumar and V Ramarao - who were directors of PJ Pipes and Vessels Private Limited, a Mumbai-based company, to which the credit facilities were sanctioned, were acquitted from the case as the prosecution failed to prove the charges against them beyond reasonable doubt. B J Vohra, managing director of PJ Pipes, who was also cited as one of the accused in the case, is not alive now. Gopalakrishnan had a popular stint as the bank's chairman as he was known to sanction loans liberally, but came under a cloud in 1997 when he was arrested by CBI in a corruption case. Investigations against him came in the context of the bank's mounting non-performing assets. He has since been acquitted in a few cases. In the PJ Pipes case, the prosecution case was that Gopalakrishnan and Shanmugasundaram had abused their position as public servants and entered into criminal conspiracy in the matter of availing and sanctioning letters of bank guarantees, overdraft facilities and term loan facilities in favour of PJ Pipes. Shanmugasundaram had recommended credit facilities to PJ Pipes, ignoring his head office's and the bank's general manager's advice that the company was not eligible for such facilities as it had already availed of maximum permissible bank finance. Gopalakrishnan, then executive director, approved Shanmugasundaram's proposal, the prosecution said. ``The prosecution has proved the case against Gopalakrishnan and Shanmugasundaram beyond reasonable doubt,'' the judge said. He, however, added that the three directors of PJ Pipes were not found guilty as the CBI had failed to prove that they had acted with dishonest and fraudulent intent and cheated the bank. Gopalakrishnan and Shamugasundaram were convicted under section 120 (B) (criminal conspiracy) of IPC read with section 420 (cheating) of IPC and several other provisions of the Prevention of Corruption Act. source : Times of India
