Chennai, Oct 8 (IANS): A CBI court here Wednesday convicted a postal assistant for three-and-half years' rigorous imprisonment and fined him around Rs.22.6 lakh in a criminal misconduct case, the investigation agency said.

In a statement issued here, the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) said the court sentenced Mohammed Maqdoom, postal assistant in a post office here, to rigorous imprisonment of three and a half years and a fine of Rs.22,65,400.

According to the CBI, Maqdoom, while working as postal assistant and officiating as assistant sub-post master at Royapettah post office and Gopalapuram post office during 2010-11, abused his official position and misappropriated the money/proceeds of Kisan Vikas Patras totalling to Rs.15,40,000.

The Kisan Vikas Patras were entrusted to him by the customers of the post office for opening the time deposit accounts.

However, Maqdom created false account numbers and issued false and forged pass books with those account numbers to the customers in order to make them believe that the term deposit accounts were opened, and thus committed criminal breach of trust and cheating.