Supreme Court: The Division Bench of Surya Kant and Dipankar Datta, JJ. suspended the conviction of Mohammed Moquim in the Orissa Rural Housing Development Corporation (ORHDC) loan fraud case for offences under Sections 468, 471, 420 and Section 120-B of the Penal Code, 1860 (‘IPC’).
Mohammed Moquim is a Congress MLA from Cuttack-Barabati constituency. The ORHDC is a Government owned Corporation and its objective was to act as the principal institution for financing, promoting and developing rural housing and related activities. It was alleged that the Managing Director and Company Secretary of ORHDC, while discharging their public duties illegally sanctioned and disbursed the loan amount of Rs.1.5 Crore for a new project (Metro City II) by Metro Builders Pvt. Ltd., of which Mohammed Moquim was the Managing Director. Hence, they caused wrongful financial loss to ORHDC. It was alleged that Metro Builders Pvt. Ltd. was a known defaulter to ORHDC as they had not repaid the previous loan amount of Rs.1 Crore taken for their project.
The Special Judge, Vigilance, Bhubaneswar convicted Mohammed Moquim for offences under Sections 468, 471, 420 and Section 120-B of the IPC and sentenced to undergo rigorous imprisonment for three years for each such offence along with payment of fine of Rs.50,000/-. The High Court upheld his conviction. The High Court opined that he played an active role for getting the building plan approved and the loan amount was sanctioned in favour of the company on his application after he had forged several documents.
[Mohammed Moquim v. State of Odisha]
Source: Press
Image Source: https://twitter.com/iammdmoquim/status/1226911507268567042
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