BALURGHAT: A billing clerk of the Dakshin Dinajpur District Court was sentenced on Friday for embezzling nearly Rs 4 lakh from the GPF accounts of three court employees. The verdict was delivered by the ADJ First Court, presided over by Judge Santosh Kumar Pathak.
Public Prosecutor Ritabrata Chakraborty said the convicted clerk, Souvik Majumder, was found guilty of siphoning funds from the General Provident Fund accounts of employees Najarias Murmu, Chiranjit Khamti and Dhananjay Ghosh.
On Friday, Judge Pathak sentenced Majumder to seven years of rigorous imprisonment under Section 477A of the IPC. The court also imposed a fine of Rs 4 lakh, with an additional one-year simple imprisonment in case of default.
In a significant directive, the judge ordered that the fine collected from the convict be distributed as compensation: Rs 1.5 lakh to Najarias Murmu, Rs 90,000 to Chiranjit Khamti and Rs1.6 lakh to Dhananjay Ghosh. The remaining amount of about Rs 10,000 will be allotted to the District Legal Services Authority (DLSA), the court directed.
According to case details, on March 3, 2022, Chief Administrative Officer Subhash Chandra Roy, acting on the direction of the then District Judge, lodged a written complaint at Balurghat police station against Majumder.
The complaint stated that approximately Rs 4 lakh had been misappropriated from the three GPF accounts and transferred to bank accounts belonging to other individuals. Subsequent investigation confirmed that Majumder had manipulated the government-controlled IFMS system to carry out the fraudulent transactions.
Public Prosecutor Chakraborty further said: “The matter was initially reported by the then Chief Judicial Magistrate Gairik Ray to the then District Judge, Jiban Kumar Sadhu, under Order No. 68 dated March 3, 2022.”