Daijiworld Media Network - Mangaluru (SP)
Mangaluru, Nov 11: Through a judgement delivered by R P Ramalinge Gowda, judge of the first additional district and sessions court here, a bank employee has been sentenced to four years of imprisonment in addition to levying on her a fine of Rs 15,000.
Grace Fernandes, a bank employee, was handed down this punishment. Through a complaint, a retired teacher, Teresa D'Souza, had filed a case of cheating against her. The amount involved was over five lac rupees.
Teresa had retired after serving as a teacher. In the years 2006-07 and 2008-09, she had sought and obtained help from Grace Fernandes, who worked for a nationalised bank near Milagres here, for keeping the pension and other funds she received by way of retirement benefits, as she knew Grace well. She had completely trusted Grace Fernandes and used to put through all banking transactions with her help. Teresa's cheque book was also collected by Grace. Whenever Teresa deposited money into her account, Grace, instead of issuing computerised passbook, used to make the entries by hand. In fact, she cheated the lady by not crediting the amounts into her account. When Teresa handed over money to her with a request to invest it in fixed deposit, Grace had created a fake record and issued her a fake receipt.
When Teresa visited the bank in the year 2008, Grace was absent. Teresa found out that her account was showing a balance of only Rs 15,571 instead of Rs 5,46,650 as per the handwritten passbook. When Teresa visited the residence of Grace and questioned her, she and her husband had threatened the retired teacher. Teresa filed a police complaint in the city (north) police station and the bank immediately suspended Grace from its services. The then police inspector, Vinay Gaonkar, had conducted investigation and filed charge sheet in the court on March 14, 2011. The court which heard the case, had absolved the accused of the cheating charges. The prosecution went on an appeal against this judgement in the first additional district and sessions court. The court which conducted hearing came to the conclusion that Grace D'Souza was guilty.
She has been awarded two years of jail term for stealing documents from the bank apart from fine of Rs 2,000 with the condition that she will have to spend two more months inside jail in case the fine is not paid. She has been given a year of imprisonment for creating fake documents apart from fine of Rs 1,000. In this case also failure to pay fine entails one month inside jail. Four years of imprisonment each for breaching the trust of the customer in her capacity of a bank employee, and cheating the customer, and fine of Rs 3,000 each was levied. She has also been ordered to pay a compensation of Rs 10,000 to Teresa D'Souza.
Public prosecutor B Shekhar Shetty, had appeared in the court on behalf of the prosecution in this case.