A CBI court on Thursday convicted five individuals, including Bechar Zala, the former branch manager of the State Bank of Saurashtra’s Naroda Road branch, sentencing them to five years of rigorous imprisonment (RI) in a 24-year-old bank fraud case. The court also imposed a total fine of Rs7 lakh on the accused. Along with Zala, the other convicts are Ramesh Shah, Praful Shah, Hemendra Shah, and Manoj Brahmbhatt.
The fraud case dates back to 2001, when Zala and the other accused allegedly conspired to defraud the bank by approving housing loans totaling Rs3.93 crore using forged documents. Investigators discovered that Zala, in his role as branch manager, bypassed mandatory checks and failed to verify the eligibility of the borrowers. The CBI filed the case in September 2001, and after a detailed investigation, nine charge sheets were filed over the years.
In December 2024, the court delivered judgments in five of the charge sheets, convicting 15 individuals and sentencing them to three to five years of RI with fines totaling Rs15.35 lakh. With Thursday’s verdict, all 20 accused have been convicted, and fines totaling ₹22.35 lakh have been imposed across all charge sheets.
