Former Minister Sunil Kedar Convicted in Nagpur District Bank Bond Scam After 21 Years

Nagpur: Former Maharashtra minister Sunil Kedar and six others have been convicted in the Rs 150-crore Nagpur District Central Cooperative Bank (NDCCB) scam case. Additional Chief Judicial Magistrate Jyoti Pekhale-Purkar passed the order on Friday. This is a much talked about scam and all eyes were on this decision. Kedar was the chairman of the bank when the scam took place.

Out of the total 11 accused, nine were tried under sections 406 (breach of trust), 409 (criminal breach of trust by public servant etc.),468 (forgery of documents), 471 (forgery of documents), 120-B (conspiracy) and 34 (common intention) of the IPC. The accused have been identified as Sunil Kedar, Ashok Namdev Chaudhary, the then general manager of the bank, Ketan Kantilal Seth, Subodh Chanddayal Bhandari, Nandkishore Shankarlal Trivedi (all from Mumbai), Amit Sitapati Verma (Ahmedabad).

Bank loses Rs 150 crore.

In 2001-2002, Home Trade Limited Mumbai, Indramani Merchants Pvt. Ltd. Ltd. Kolkata, Century Dealers Pvt. Ltd. Ltd. Government bonds worth Rs 125 crore were purchased from Kolkata, Syndicate Management Services Ahmedabad and Giltage Management Services Mumbai. Since then, these companies have not issued government bonds and have not returned the bank amount. The amount has gone up to Rs 150 crore with interest.

The case was stalled due to various reasons.

Kishore Belle, the then deputy superintendent of the State Criminal Investigation Department (CID), is the investigating officer of the scam. After the investigation was completed, he filed a charge sheet in the court on November 22, 2002. The case has been pending ever since. Due to various reasons, the trial on the case could not be completed immediately.