Madras high court quashes case filed against dormant account holder in fraud case

Justice N Anand Venkatesh, quashing the case in his order dated August 30, said, the account holder must have been added as a witness and not as an accused.

The Madras high court has quashed a criminal case registered against a holder of a dormant bank account, which was used to deposit a bogus cheque of ₹9.99 crore in the name of a Madhya Pradesh-based company.

The petitioner, Kaushik Palicha, was named as the tenth accused in the case. (PTI)

Justice N Anand Venkatesh, quashing the case in his order dated August 30, said, the account holder must have been added as a witness and not as an accused.

“This court finds that no offence has been made out against the petitioner and the continuation of the criminal proceedings against the petitioner will result in abuse of process of court…” the judge said. “It is a matter of fact that there was a huge data leak in the Punjab National Bank, as a result of which, the sensitive details of customers got exposed and it was taken advantage of by many on-line fraudsters. This fact becomes material since the dormant accounts, which were not put to use by the customers concerned for a long time, were also identified and an attempt was made to transact money through such dormant accounts,” he added.

The incident took place in September 2021, said counsel Sanjay Pinto, representing the petitioner. The petitioner, Kaushik Palicha, was named as the tenth accused in the case.The case pertains to a person who submitted a cheque of ₹9.99 crore in the city’s Purasawalkam branch of the Punjab National Bank in favour of Ramcharan Company (run by the petitioner). It was withdrawn by a Madhya Pradesh-based company Dillip Buildcon Limited. The then operations manager of the Punjab National Bank compared the signature found in the cheque with the sample signature and found that the same did not tally. On suspicion, the manager called the Dillip Buildcon Limited and was informed that they did not issue any such cheque. The company further informed the bank managerthat the relevant cheque in question was only for a sum of ₹8,737 issued in the name of Sachin Sen, back in 2019.

Following this, an FIR was registered by the police against ten people involved in the scam. According to the police investigations, nine accused attempted to deal with a bogus cheque at the Punjab National Bank in Chennai’s Purasawalkam Branch. The petitioner (A10) was roped as an accused in this case only based on the confessions made by the other accused persons that have got in touch with Ramcharan Company and the petitioner should promised that if the cheque gets encashed, he would pay ₹5 crores to the other accused persons, the court said. And that it was only based on this understanding, they proceeded further to present the cheque. After the police filed a chargesheet in the case, the petitioner challenged it in the high court.

The court noted that the Punjab National Bank is located in the same building where the defunct Ramcharan Company, a partnership firm, used to operate. The firm had maintained a ‘zero balance’ in the account on the date of alleged occurrence. “Thus, the account of the partnership firm had almost become defunct,” the court said. “It is this account, which had been targeted by the scamsters….There is nothing on record except the so-called confession statements given by the other accused persons to rope in the petitioner (A10) as an accused…”

The court directed the prosecution to proceed further against the other accused in the case and complete the proceedings at the earliest.