A special court in Bengaluru Friday convicted five persons, including a government official and officials of the Mandya Urban Development Authority (MUDA), and sentenced them to seven years of rigorous imprisonment for misappropriating Rs 5 crore. The Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI), which investigated the case, had filed a chargesheet against the accused in 2015. The convicted officials are Anand K, H S Nagalingaswamy, Chandrashekar, H K Nagaraja (first division assistant) and K B Harshan. The court also imposed a fine of Rs 5.02 crore on the accused and said the amount will be forwarded to MUDA. The CBI had registered a case on request of the Karnataka government on the allegations that K Anand (a businessman who dealt in iron ore in the name of A R Logistics), Nagalingaswamy (CEO of Future Farm and Estates Ltd), Chandrashekar (a real estate agent and proprietor of Akash Enterprises), H K Nagaraja (FDA in MUDA) and K B Harshan (a private person, employee of K Anand) had entered into a conspiracy and misappropriated five cheques of Rs one crore each issued by the then Commissioner of MUDA. During the investigation, it was found that Chandrashekhar had opened a current account in the name of his non-existent proprietary concern Akash Enterprises at Indian Bank in Mandya in 2012. Thereafter, in February 2013, K Anand and H S Nagalingaswamy with the assistance of H K Nagaraja, working in MUDA, fraudulently obtained five cheques of Rs one crore each issued by then MUDA Commissioner from its savings bank account at Allahabad Bank towards investment in fixed deposits in Indian Bank in Mandya. The accused wrote the account number of Akash Enterprises in the payee column of these cheques and got the entire proceeds of these cheques fraudulently credited to the current account of Akash Enterprises and misappropriated the amount. Thereafter, fake fixed deposit receipts were submitted to MUDA through H K Nagaraja which were kept for record purposes. K B Harshan assisted both K Anand and H S Nagalingaswamy in this fraud by filling credit vouchers to deposit the cheques and making withdrawals and transfers from the account, CBI said.
