Ahmedabad, May 9 A special CBI court has sentenced a former insurance surveyor and three others to three years of rigorous imprisonment for orchestrating fraudulent fire insurance claims that cheated New India Assurance of more than Rs 31 lakh.
The court passed the order on Friday on two separate cases and found the accused guilty of criminal conspiracy and fraud under the Indian Penal Code.
The court sentenced former insurance surveyor Jatin Joshi and private individuals Madhusudan D. Bhavsar, Ila Patel and Vijay Kayasth to a three-year jail term.
It also imposed a fine of Rs 50,000 each on them.
In the first case, the accused entered into a criminal conspiracy between 2002 and 2003, submitting forged documents on behalf of Vadodara-based M/s Sonu Communications to claim Rs 11.52 lakh, while in the second instance, they used a similar ruse for M/s M.D. Patel & Co. to siphon off Rs 20.08 lakh from the insurance firm’s Surat office.
After investigation, the CBI filed two chargesheets on June 15 and June 18, 2004, against the accused persons.
The court convicted and sentenced four of the accused, and abated the proceedings against three others - Ronald James, the then official of New India Assurance Co. Ltd. in Surat, and private individuals Nilesh Patel and Umesh Patel, who died during the course of the trial.
