Housing society office-bearers get 3 years in jail

ACMMKuvempuNoothanaMadariGruhaNirmanaSahakaraSanghaRslakhThe court also ordered that Rs 3.75 lakh collected from the two office-bearers be paid to the two members. The order said secretary K Puttaswamy, and power of attorney holder and director BV Kumar will have to undergo two years' simple imprisonment for an offence under Section 406 IPC, and pay Rs 50,000 as fine each. They duo was sentenced to three years' simple imprisonment and payment of Rs 75,000 fine each on two separate counts. They were also ordered to undergo three months' jail for criminal conspiracy under section 120(b) IPC and pay a fine of Rs 5,000 each. All sentences will run concurrently, the order stated.The order comes in the wake of a private complaint filed in 2003 before the court by a lawyer, S Satyanarayanan from Shivanagar in Rajajinagar, and a chargesheet filed by city police in 2004. The complaint stated that he and several others paid Rs 98,000 for the allotment of housing sites on survey No 42/90 of Mallathahalli village in Bangalore South taluk. Another member, M R Hiriyanna Rao, also paid Rs 30,350 for a site on survey No 47/48 of Shettihalli village on Hessarghatta Road. But the housing society misappropriated the amount and cheated Satyanarayanan and Rao, it stated.The court noted that Satyanarayanan and Hiriyanna Rao and 1,400 other members of the society were harassed and cheated by the office-bearers of the society. "If any lenient view is shown to both the offenders, it will give a wrong signal to the society and the victims have to be compensated for the monetary loss caused by both offenders," the court observed.