Coffee board fraud: Kerala HC substitutes jail with fine for 5 accused
KOCHI: The Kerala High Court has confirmed the conviction of the five accused in the case relating to misappropriation and falsification of accounts by employees of the Coffee Board Kerala. The court, however, substituted the imprisonment awarded by the Ernakulam CBI Special Court with fines. The court issued the order on a petition filed by N Chandrasekaran Nair, P J Jose, V I Benjamin, Mohammed Sherif and T J John against the jail sentences awarded by the CBI Special Court.
The prosecution case was that first accused Chandrasekharan Nair (who died during trial), while working as the assistant manager of coffee pool depot, Thodupuzha, from May 1985 to August 1986, had hatched a criminal conspiracy with two other accused, who were coffee collecting agents, for misappropriation of the coffee pool fund amount of the depot, and forged the records, registers and receipts in relation to the supplementary payments made to the coffee growers and allegedly misappropriated Rs 2,27,029.
The CBI Special Court found all of them guilty of various offences and sentenced them to different jail terms and fines. Substituting the imprisonment with the fines, the court observed that there were sufficient materials to hold that the accused had committed the offences.
However, the incidents happened during the 1985-86 period and the accused were convicted after a long-drawn trial in 2004. Appeals against the conviction and sentence had been pending for a long time since then. Two of the accused had expired pending the proceedings. Besides, all accused were considerably aged now and had been undergoing the trauma for the past several years.