PRADEEP KUMAR BHATNAGAR Vs. STATE OF U P

JUDGEMENT

(1.) I have heard Sri P. N. Misra, learned senior counsel and Sri S. K. Gupta, learned counsel for the applicant, Sri Gopal Swaroop Chaturvedi, learned senior counsel assisted by Sri Samit Gopal for the opposite party No. 2, Smt. Nalini Prasad widow of Brigadier Naresh Prasad and the learned A.G.A., for the State and perused the application and affidavit filed in support thereof. After hearing parties, I reserved the judgment, which I proceed to deliver by means of the present order.

(2.) THE applicant is presently Assistant General Manager, Bank of Baroda, Zonal Inspection Centre at Pune. At the time of the alleged offence, he was posted as Chief Manager, Bank of Baroda, S.S.I. Branch, Sector-18, N.O.I.D.A.

(3.) IT was argued by learned counsel for the applicant that the applicant who was the Chief Manager of the Sector 18, N.O.I.D.A., S.S.I. Branch of the Bank of Baroda at the material time and a senior bank officer, had been implicated in a mala fide manner by means of an F.I.R. on concocted allegations only because recovery/auction proceedings had been initiated by the Bank before the Debt Recovery Tribunal (hereafter D.R.T.) for realisation of the loan amount from the borrowers as a counter blast and defence to the said claim. IT has been falsely stated by the complainant that she was not in the know of the proceedings before the D.R.T. till the rent from the flat in Nehru Place which was let out to I.F.F.C.O. was attached on the basis that a legal award had been passed on 3.6.99 by the D.R.T. upholding the claim of the applicant's bank. There is no credible legal evidence for summoning the applicant for this offence. The I.O. has not even cared to take the admitted signatures of the complainant and to get the same compared with the signatures on the disputed document by a hand writing expert to reach a prima facie conclusion of forgery of the complainant's signatures on the said document and has chosen to accept the ipse dixit of the complainant in an unwarranted manner. IT has further been contended that the statements of the witnesses contained in the charge-sheet, which have been compositely annexed as Annexure-18, and include the statements of the subsequent manager Sri Rajiv Sharma, Smt. Kumbh Gautam, Chief Manager, U.P.F.C., Sector 6, N.O.I.D.A. and statement of Smt. Rashmi Prasad the wife of late Somesh Prasad do not disclose any incriminatory circumstance against the applicant.