New Delhi, Dec 30 (IANS): A special Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) court in Hyderabad has awarded seven years of rigorous imprisonment (RI) to a former State Bank of India (SBI) manager, in connection with a cheating case, an official said on Thursday.

The Additional Judge, CBI Cases, Hyderabad, who sentenced Praveen Singh, then Branch Manager of SBI, Research Centre Imarath Branch, in Telangana, also slapped a fine of Rs 2 lakh on him.

The CBI had registered a case in April 2010 against Praveen Singh, on the allegations that the accused entered conspiracy with unknown persons to cheat the SBI in the matter of pre-maturely cancelling Special Term Deposit Receipts, embezzling the funds to his own accounts and also into the accounts opened in the fictitious names.

The accused had misappropriated a sum of over Rs 4 crore.

Due to the conspiracy hatched by the accused, the SBI suffered huge loss.

The bank, however, detected the fraud. It had initiated a departmental inquiry to look into the matter, and later, the bank decided to approach the federal probe agency.

The CBI recorded testimonies of over 100 people to gather evidence against the accused.

The probe agency collected a number of documentary evidence against the accused. After recording the various statements and collecting digital and documentary evidence, the agency took the legal opinion as well on the chargesheet before it was filed.