Chennai: Madras High Court has directed ADGP, Economic Offences Wing, to produce all case records on alleged misappropriation of funds of Kancheepuram Central Cooperative Bank (KCCB) to the tune of over Rs 30 crore by officials of the bank on June 12, for its perusal. The court has directed the investigating officer in the three cases to appear before the court on June 12.
Staying all further proceedings in the case pending before the Judicial Magistrate-I, Poonamallee, until further orders, a division bench comprising Justices K.K. Sasidharan and R. Subramanian directed the magistrate to forward the entire case file to this court immediately.
Passing interim orders on an appeal filed by one T.K. Babu, the bench said, “This appeal is really an eye opener as to how public funds of banks are misappropriated by employees in collusion with authorities. The material records were burnt in a fire accident. The National Bank of Agriculture and Rural Development (NABARD) suspected that the fire accident was the creation of the accused, for destroying the evidence.”
The police appears to have investigated the case registered in connection with the fraudulent acts without showing any sense of seriousness. There was no investigation conducted by the police with regard to the fire accident and as to whether it was the handwork of the accused to destroy the evidence. “We are therefore, of the view that all is not well. We are of the view that the entire records and the police reports must be verified before taking further action in the matter. In the meantime, if the case is taken up for trial on the basis of available materials and evidence collected by the police, interest of justice would suffer,” the bench added and gave the above directives.
The bench said alleging that the branch manager and other officials of KCCB misappropriated more than Rs 30 crore and the authorities have failed to take action, Babu filed a petition seeking CBI probe into it. Before the single judge, NABARD filed a counter affidavit contending that '9.63 crore has been misappropriated by giving jewel loan. NABARD was also of the view that a fire accident was set up at Porur Branch to destroy records.
The bench said as per its earlier directive, the home secretary obtained a status report from DGP, who submitted that a case was registered against Chan Basha, the then manager of the bank.
