This is a case related to one public sector bank where an innocent officer is wrongly fixed and punished in an inquiry against him. The officer as a branch manager sent a proposal which falls within the delegated authority of the regional head under compulsion from the regional head. However he gave all the information in the process note covering the risk factors involved in financing the unit. He however gave his recommendations as per the bank format in the last page. there was lot of correcspondance between the branch and Regional Office on the proposal for which the officer gave prompt replies and in one of his replies he also gave that proposal should be considered for sanction only after stringent verification at their (RO) end. The Branch Manager was abruptly transferred to another branch and the loan was sanctioned to the unit subsequent to the transfer of the officer. The account became non performing asset within 6 months of sanction. The branch manager was held responsible for lapses such as pre-sanction inspection not done, due diligence not done etc.
Please note that the bank has replaced all the 6 pages of process note of the branch with convenient note but retained the last page where page number 7 is clearly printed and where his full signature was put. There are no initials in the other 6 pages. He has habit of putting his initials in all pages which are missing. The due diligence report and pre sanction inspection reports are removed from the records apart from the Branch Replies to RO queries. He also produced xerox copies of the correspondance between the branch and RO which the external inquiry authority (who is a retired bank employee empanelled as external inquiry authority by the bank) has disallowed on the plea that the same are not available in either branch or RO records.
The officer wants to file criminal conspiracy case against the Bank for document tampering under various sections including section 120B. Kindly advise whether case can be filed at Hyderabad, which is the place of incidence. One of the senior advocates said that siince the Head office of the Bank is at Mumbai, the case can only be filed at Mumbai and not at the place of occurence which is Hyderabad. Kindly guide in the matter.
