IMPORTANT POINTS
Ordinarily, the superior Court should suspend the sentence of imprisonment in the matters relating to the offence under the PC Act.
There is a distinction between suspension of execution of sentence and suspension of the operation of the order of conviction.

JUDGMENT :

DINESH MAHESHWARI, J.

1. Leave granted.

2. In these appeals, the appellant-accused has called in question the orders dated 03.01.2019 and 29.01.2019 passed by the High Court of Karnataka at Bengaluru in IA Nos. 1 of 2018 and 1 of 2019 in Criminal Appeal No. 2000 of 2018 whereby, the High Court has rejected his prayer under Section 389 of the Code of Criminal Procedure (‘CrPC’) for suspension of execution of sentence during the pendency of appeal.

3. The background aspects, so far relevant for the present purpose, could be noticed, in brief, as follows:

3.1. The appellant herein was tried as Accused No. 2 in Special Criminal Case No. 12 of 2002 for the offences under Section 120-B read with Sections 409, 420, 468, 471, 477-A of the Indian Penal Code ('IPC') and Section 13(2) read with Sections 13(1)(c) and (d) of the Prevention of Corruption Act, 1988 ('PC Act').

3.2. The prosecution case had been that during the years 1995-96, the appellant and the Accused No. 1, who were respectively working as clerk and manager in the State Bank of Mysore, entered into a criminal conspiracy and committed several acts of breach of trust, cheating, forgery, falsification of accounts and misappropriation of funds. It was, inter alia, alleged that the accused persons raised fraudulent debits to the extent of Rs. 23,53,090/- in various accounts maintained by the customers in the bank like Savings Bank Account, Current Account, Term Deposit, Reinvestment Deposit etc; and the amount so debited was fraudulently credited to the personal accounts of the appellant and was obtained by forging the withdrawals. It was also alleged that during the year 1996, both the accused persons fraudulently added a fictitious name K. Prabhakara to Savings Bank Account No. 1400 existing in the name of R. Madhusudana, though the specimen signatures of K. Prabhakara were not available in the bank; fraudulent credits were posted in the said Savings Bank Account No. 1400 to the tune of Rs. 9,46,399/-; and subsequently, the appellant made withdrawals on different dates from the said account by forging the signatures of K. Prabhakara. It was also alleged that the Accused No. 1 permitted several temporary Overdrafts for substantial amounts in different Current Accounts in excess of his powers and suppressed these facts from the controller; and that such accounts were closed after misappropriation of funds.

3.3. In view of the short question involved in these appeals, all the factual aspects of the case need not be elaborated herein. Suffice would be to notice for the present purpose that during the trial, Accused No. 1 expired and the matter stood abated qua him. However, after due trial in Special Case No. 12 of 2002, the Court of XLVI Additional City Civil and Sessions Judge and Special Judge for C.B.I. Cases, by its judgment dated 22.10. 2018, convicted the appellant for the offences aforesaid while holding that he had forged the signatures of many customers, had created withdrawal slips with dishonest intention, and had misappropriated the amount of various depositors from their accounts. The Trial Court proceeded to award the sentence/s to the appellant as follows[Extraction from pp. 270-272 of the SLP paper-book]:

"The accused No. 2 for the offence under Section 120B IPC shall undergo rigorous imprisonment of seven years and pay fine of Rs. 50,000/-, in default to pay the fine amount, shall further undergo simple imprisonment for one year.

The accused No. 2 for the offence under Section 420 IPC shall undergo rigorous imprisonment of seven years and pay fine of Rs. 50,000/-, in default to pay the fine amount, shall further undergo simple imprisonment for one year.

The accused No. 2 for the offence under Section 409 IPC shall undergo rigorous imprisonment of seven years and pay fine of Rs. 50,000/-, in default to pay the fine amount, shall further undergo simple imprisonment for one year.

The accused No. 2 for the offence under Section 468 IPC shall undergo rigorous impri