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 misapp