Excelsior Correspondent
UDHAMPUR, Sept 19: Principal Sessions Judge, A K Koul today awarded four years imprisonment and fine of Rs 20,000 to then Branch Post-Master Onkar Singh, son of Dina Nath of Gorian, Ramnagar, who misappropriated the depositors’ money.
According to the police case, on November 6, 2003 Superintendent of Post Offices, Udhampur lodged a complaint mentioning that Onkar Singh during his posting as Branch Post Master, Nallah Gorian Branch Office received Rs 10,000 each from Puran Chand, Sushma Devi and Shanker Dass for deposit in Time Deposit Accounts. He made the entries in MSY (Mahila Samridhi Yojna) passbooks instead of prescribed passbooks and thereafter allotted fictitious account numbers to the passbooks. Instead of crediting the amount to the Government account, he misappropriated the same.
During investigation, it was established that Onkar Singh had committed offences under Sections 409, 420, 467, 468 and 471 RPC. After completion of investigation, police presented challan in the Court of law.
After hearing Public Prosecutor Navneet Gupta for the State whereas Advocate I D Sharma for the accused, the Principal Sessions Judge observed, “accused breached the trust of depositors and misappropriated the money. He dishonestly induced the public to deliver him the money with intention to cheat them. Right from day one accused demonstrated his malafide intentions to commit a fraud, which he succeeded in committing and ultimately duped the depositors”.
“The accused has not only misappropriated the money in respect of which he has faced prosecution but has also cheated other depositors as well who have probably not taken recourse to law but it appears from the evidence that he has returned the money to them”, the Court further observed and said, “all this speaks about the criminal conduct of the accused during his service career. So accused has committed offences under Sections 409/420 RPC”.
“The accused is more than 50 years old and has faced prosecution for about 8 years. So keeping in view the magnitude of the crime committed by the accused and other attending factors I suppose the ends of justice would be met with if a lenient view is taken against him in so far as the process of sentence is concerned”, the Court said.
With there observations, the Court sentenced him to imprisonment for two years and imposed a fine of Rs 10,000 for each of the offences. In case of default in payment of fine, he would undergo a further imprisonment for two months. The sentences would run concurrently.
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