The Hindu : New Delhi News : Post office staffer sent to jail

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Monday, Jul 30, 2007
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New Delhi

Post office staffer sent to jail

New Delhi: A trick by a postal employee made him richer by Rs 5,000 but cost him a year’s rigorous imprisonment fifteen years later.

The errant postal staffer, Rambir, a probationer manning the savings bank deposit counter at Kashmere Gate Post Office here, had on October 17, 1992 pocketed Rs. 5,000 deposited by one Nand Lal, a savings account holder at the branch.

The sentence by Additional Sessions Judge Rajiv Mehra follows an earlier one by a magistrate’s court against which Rambir had appealed.

On receiving the money, he immediately recorded the deposit in Lal’s passbook but “failed” to do the same in the post office ledgers.

Rambir also changed the date of the deposit from October 17 to October 13 in a bid to cover up his crime.

It further helped the convict in his scheme that Lal was only a rare visitor to the post office.

The matter was not brought to light for two years until Lal visited the post office on April 4, 1994, only to find that he had Rs. 5,000 short in his account and there was no record of his previous deposit.

He made a complaint to the post office about this. Subsequently, a departmental inquiry resulted in Rambir’s dismissal, followed by the filing of a criminal case under criminal breach of trust and falsification of accounts.

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