Mumbai, March 18 A special CBI court here on Wednesday sentenced two individuals to five years in prison, and two others to three years, in a 2012 case where the Bank of India suffered a loss of over Rs 3 crore due to a forged Letter of Credit.
Harit Mehta, the owner of Infinity Transmission, a private firm, was sentenced to five years in prison and ordered to pay a fine of Rs 3.50 crore.
Abhay Mehta, the director of the firm, was also sentenced to five years of rigorous imprisonment with a fine of Rs 1 crore.
Former bank official Manojkumar Mathur, and another accused, Ilesh Shah, received a three-year jail term with a fine of Rs 50,000 each.
Special Judge Amit Kharkar found the accused guilty under sections 420 (cheating), 467 (forgery of valuable security), and 120-B (criminal conspiracy) of the Indian Penal Code.
Mathur, who was then a senior manager at the Bank of India (BOI), was accused of entering into a criminal conspiracy with the others.
According to the CBI, the Nariman Point branch of the nationalised bank received a Letter of Credit (LC) dated July 20, 2009, purportedly issued by the HDFC Bank on behalf of Jayant Agro Organic Limited for discounting. The beneficiary was Infinite Transmission.
The branch discounted the LC for Rs 3,55,32,000, and Rs 2,47,12,213 was credited into the account of Infinite Transmission.
Abhay and Harit Mehta then withdrew the amount. However, it was later found that the LC had been forged, causing a loss of Rs 3.4 crore to the BOI, the central probe agency told the court.
Special prosecutor Jeetendra Sharma argued that Mathur, who was in charge of the bank's Forex department, dishonestly discounted the forged LC.
A total of 32 witnesses were examined during the trial.