Public servants convicted of misappropriation and forgery through forged loan applications must be proven to have made false documents and abused their positions, affirming the importance of direct evidence in establishing involvement in such conspiracies.

JUDGMENT :

A. BADHARUDEEN, J.

1. These criminal appeals have been filed under Section 374 of the Code of Criminal Procedure, 1973, (hereinafter referred to as ‘Cr.P.C.’ for short). Crl.A. Nos.423/2016 & 458/2016 have been filed at the instance of one Sri.C.Sasidharan Nair, who is accused No.2, and Crl.A. Nos.470/2016 & 471/2016 have been filed at the instance of one Sri.Sasikumar, who is accused No.1, in C.C. Nos.30/2009 & 32/2009 on the files of the Enquiry Commissioner and Special Judge, Thiruvananthapuram (hereinafter referred to as ‘Special Court’ for short) challenging the verdict of conviction and sentence dated 28.04.2016 in the above cases. The sole respondent in all these appeals is the State of Kerala represented by VACB. C.C. Nos.30/2009 & 32/2009 were jointly tried by the learned Special Judge and rendered a common verdict on 28.04.2016.

2. Heard Adv.Suman Chakravarthy, the learned counsel appearing for the appellant/accused No.2 in Crl.A. Nos.423/2016 and 458/2016 and Sri.Ananth Krishna K.S. who was appointed as State Brief for the appellant/accused No.1 in Crl.A. Nos.470/2016 & 471/2016, since the counsel who filed these appeals had relinquished his engagement, as well as the learned Special Public Prosecutor in detail. Perused the common verdict impugned and the records of the Special Court.

3. The prosecution case in C.C. No.30/2009 is that the first and second accused being public servants, employed as Secretary and Senior Clerk respectively in Thiruvananthapuram Service Co-operative Bank Ltd. No.T-131, Head Office Branch, Thiruvananthapuram during the period from 19^th December 1994 and 7^th January 1995 hatched criminal conspiracy along with P.K. Manoharan (no more) and G.Sreekumari who were working as Clerk and Assistant Secretary respectively in the aforesaid Co-operative Bank during the same period and thereby abused their official position and misappropriated amounts from the Bank. It is alleged that in pursuance of the above referred conspiracy, accused dishonestly and fraudulently misappropriated an amount of Rs.30,000/-, that is, Rs.10,000/- on 19.12.1994 by availing secured loan No.280 and Rs.10,000/- each on 07.01.1995 by availing secured loan Nos. 287 and 288 on the security of the Fixed Deposit (FD) No.173/94-95 deposited in the name of one Mr.S.R.Anilkumar by forging the signatures of the above said depositor in the loan application forms, loan bonds, loan vouchers etc. without the knowledge or consent of the depositor, and used such forged documents as genuine for availing the said loans and after that the accused persons released the total amount covered by the above referred Fixed Deposit to the depositor with interest without realizing the loan amount, which resulted the loan amount in secured loan Nos. 280 and 287 to be outstanding and thereby cheated the Bank and obtained undue pecuniary advantage to the tune of Rs.30,000/- and thereby committed the offences under Section 13 (1)(c) and (d) read with