HYDERABAD: Justice P Naveen Rao of the Telangana High Court on Tuesday found top functionaries of the AP Mahesh Cooperative Urban Bank Limited guilty of contempt and sentenced them to simple imprisonment for 15 days and a fine of Rs 2,000, to be paid within four weeks.
The functionaries of the bank were identified as Umesh Chand Aswa, Managing Director and CEO, Ramesh Kumar Bugh, chairman, Purushotmadas Mandhana and Laxminarayan Rathi, Vice-Chairpersons and seven other directors. However, the sentence was suspended for 30 days in order to give the defendants time to use the appeals process.
The facts of the case are that some of the society’s members were opposed to elections for the executive body of the bank, while others supported a different group. A number of Interlocutory Applications (IA) were included in the writ petitions asking for an investigation of phoney voters, a stay on their activities, as well as orders to complete the vote count and announce the results.
After pursuing the IAs, the court issued a directive that, in part, read: “The newly-elected Directors are directed not to take policy decisions affecting the affairs of the society and the bank, including dealing with the society’s funds except for attending to the society’s and the bank’s day-to-day needs and paying salaries and allowances to the Staff, until further orders.”
The elected Board of Directors however acted in contempt of the court by disobeying its orders and making decisions that have an impact on society’s issues while acting incognito. Following lengthy arguments from both sides, the court found that the Board of Directors deliberately ignored its directives.