SAROJ KUMAR PRUSTY Vs. STATE OF ODISHA

JUDGEMENT

(1.) The petitioners in the above bail applications have approached this Court for bail under sec. 439 of Code of Criminal Procedure in connection with Lalbag P.S. Case No. 294 of 2020 corresponding to G.R. Case No. 1426 of 2020 pending in the Court of S.D.J.M. (Sadar), Cuttack in which charge sheet has been submitted for the offences as indicated below.

(2.) The factual matrix of the case, in hand, is that one Tapas Ranjan Swain, the Territory Manager of Indian Infoline Finance Ltd. (hereafter in short, 'IIFL'), a non-banking finance company incorporated and registered under the provisions of the Companies Act, 1956 having its registered office at IIFL House, Road No. 16V, Wagle Estate, Thane West and one of their gold loan branch situated at opposite Q bazaar, Nayasarak, Cuttack reported before Inspector in-charge, Lalbag police station that on 19/11/2020 at about 9.58 a.m. while their four employees, namely, Kabi Prasad Pradhan, petitioner Nilima Lenka, Lala Amrut Sagar Roy and D. Rajesh were opening their gold loan branch along with their security guard Basant Kumar Behera and their housekeeping staff Meena Behera, four unknown masked robbers entered into the branch and forcefully closed the collapsible gate and shutter from inside. After entering the branch, the robbers took Lala Amrut Sagar Roy at gun point and kicked him and physically assaulted him. It is stated that as per their initial records, approximately thirty nine kilograms of gold, which valued approximately Rs.17.77 crores (seventeen crores seventy seven lakhs) excluding the making charges and a cash of Rs.4.41 lakhs (four lakhs forty one thousand) were taken away by the robbers from the branch.

(3.) During course of investigation, it was found that IIFL Ltd. is a non-banking financial institution and it has around 1873 branches all over India. IIFL Nayasarak Branch (hereafter 'Company') is one of such branch located under Lalbag Police Station and it is manned by one Branch Manager, some gold appraisers, valuers and others. In the higher hierarchy, it was controlled by one Territory Manager and above him remains one Area Manager, who was looking after the normal functioning of the Company. Though some works were being done in the Company on offline mode and some registers and records were maintained in the Company but the Company was almost running on the online mode. It was a loan giving Company against deposit of gold and taking interest from the public. When any customer was coming to the Company, he was first coming in contact with the Customer Care Executive and then he was to be handled by one appraiser/valuer and if the gold loan terms was agreed upon by the customer, his photograph was taken, mobile numbers were shared and the photographs of ornaments were also taken and then entire documents were transmitted to the Head Office by the Branch Manager and loan was sanctioned from the Head office and cash was disbursed to the customers. The vaults of the Company were maintained by two employees and its keys used to be rotated among them in every two weeks. All the security gadgets like CCTV, collapsible gate, audit mechanism etc. were installed in the Company. It also revealed during investigation that the employees of the Company could able to breach all the security norms on one pretext or the other and nobody could observe the deficit in the surveillance system and the employees/bankers of the Company could be able to think the branch to be their paternal and personal property and made access to the vaults frequently and siphoned everything from the vaults which was pledged in the Company. First they breached the security of the vaults by complaining the opening of the vaults manually instead of the OTP messages and the company authorities agreed to the same and manual operation started and by that process, the employees got the license to frequently enter into and out of the vaults and later on the kingpin accused Lala Amrut Sagar Roy single handedly managed the vaults and all the employees supported him. Though rotation of the keys was found on record, but physically accused Lala Amrut Sagar Roy and petitioner Nilima Lenka handled everything personally. This gave more scope to the accused persons to take out the pledged gold from the vaults to outside. The Branch Manager of the Company did not concentrate on the official functions of the Company rather relied on the co-accused Lala Amrut Sagar Roy and he could not explain as to why he was having no control over the employees and he never reported the matter to any higher authorities. He not only failed to perform his official duty as per the guidelines but also being gained over by accused Lala Amrut Sagar Roy, he supported the other accused persons. Accused Nilima Lenka was aware of everything that was going on in the Company, but she was taking her own share and keeping mum. All other staffs except the house keeper, sweeper, guard and newly appointed D. Rajesh were doing similar things.