BENGALURU: A retired school teacher and his student were sentenced to seven years rigorous imprisonment by the Special Court for CBI cases for unauthorisedly regularising demonetised currency notes.
The convicts are Parashivamurthy Mallunathan (57), the then Head Cashier of State Bank of Mysore of Kollegal Branch in Chamarajanagar district, and his teacher Sayed Quiam (78), a resident of Mudigundam village of Kollegal taluk.
Special Court Judge Shridhar Gopalakrishna Bhat also imposed a fine of Rs 95,000 on Mallunathan and Rs 85,000 on Quiam. Mallunathan admitted that Quiam was his school teacher and also a regular customer at the bank.
The complaint, registered by the Central Bureau of Investigation in 2016, stated that Mallunathan, while working as head cashier between January 1, 2015 and November 24, 2016, entered into a criminal conspiracy with three accused, including Quiam.
Of the total Rs 1.5 crore he exchanged illegally, Rs 10 lakh was in favour of Quiam.
Senior public prosecutor KS Hema argued that Mallunathan exchanging specified bank notes (SBN) of Rs 1.55 crore for legal tender illegally cannot be considered a misnomer or an oversight because of the rush of work as claimed by him, she argued, opposing any lenient view on the accused while imposing a sentence.
The court ruled that Mallunathan, who was entrusted with the bank funds, had taken undue advantage of the trust reposed on him, while Quiam took undue advantage of the situation for personal gain. The act of the accused affected the very purpose of implementing demonetization, the court said. It was in violation of an RBI circular and the notification dated November 8, 2016 issued by the government for demonetisation of Rs 500 and Rs 1,000 notes, it said.
Among the four accused, the court acquitted two -- Michael Katookaran, Senior Special Assistant of RBI and Wills Warunny, a private person from Bengaluru.