CHENNAI: The Special Judge for CBI Cases, Chennai, has sentenced Bhaskar Rao and his wife K Sailaja to rigorous imprisonment for defrauding the Union Bank of India and siphoning funds worth Rs 4.10 crore. The court sentenced Rao to five years RI and slapped a fine of Rs 10.76 lakh, while his wife Sailaja got three years RI and a fine of Rs 37,000.
CBI had registered a case on July 31, 2009, against the accused, when Rao had been working as a manager at the bank’s Sowcarpet branch. Rao had also been head of the advances department of the branch at the time. Rao had adopted various methods to manipulate entries in the bank’s Core Banking System (CBS) using his and fellow employees’ IDs.
Rao also made unauthorised transactions such as reactivating dormant SB accounts by way of creating fictitious loans against deposits, and invested the money he siphoned into various companies, bought shares under his name and also his wife’s. Of the `4.10 crore Rao had siphoned from the bank, Rs 3.12 crore was recovered, with an outstanding balance of Rs 98,49,000 .