67-year-old gets life term for cheating couple

Mumbai: A special Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) court on Tuesday sentenced a 67-year-old man, Narendra Patel, to life imprisonment for cheating a Dubai-based non-resident Indian NRI  (NRI) couple as well as the State Bank of India of over one crore by forging the couple’s signature on documents. Earlier, the court convicted three accused, including two bank officials, and the present accused was arrested later and tried separately.

Apart from sentencing the man to imprisonment for life, special judge Sardar Tamboli also imposed a fine of rS 5.03 crore on Patel. The three other accused have already been awarded three years’ imprisonment in this case in 2015 but Patel was absconding and was arrested later.

The prosecution’s case is that the complainant, Hussain Nensey, who resides in Sharjah had opened a fixed deposit account of Rs 1 crore for three years in the State Bank of India’s south Mumbai branch in 1996.

When Mr Nensey visited the bank in 1999 to inquire about a loan against their deposit for setting up a business, he was informed that the money had already been withdrawn from his account. Mr Nensey then submitted the original fixed deposit receipt to the bank and upon a probe it was found that the money was withdrawn from his account using a forged signature. The accused had opened another account in Mr Nensey’s name using fake documents and obtained a loan in his name.

This led to the registration of a criminal case and the police found that Patel with the help of officials and a private person had forged Mr Nensey and his wife’s signatures on bank documents and withdrew the money from their account causing a loss of around Rs 1.04 crore to the bank.