The HC recently quashed a chargesheet filed by the CBI in a lower court against a 60-year-old female lawyer accused of cheating a nationalised bank by conspiring with borrowers. A division bench of Justice S.C. Dharmadhikari and Justice Gautam Patel, however, ruled that the case against the other accused would continue. The court pulled up the CBI for accusing advocate Mohana Raj Nair for no fault of hers in a case where she had given legal opinion to Indian Bank, which had been cheated. The court said, “We believe that this is a fit case for the award of costs against the CBI and in favour of the petitioner, and that these costs should not be illusory. For three long years, the petitioner has had her till-then unsullied professional reputation besmirched, and for no good reason. That they have done so is plain. It stares us in the face. For no fault of her own, the petitioner has lost a client.” The court’s order further read, “However, she has also had to suffer the slings and arrows of a truly outrageous fortune at the hands of CBI. However, since in a very similar case of Narayana Rao, the Supreme Court did not impose costs, we follow suit and stay our hands,” the judges said in their order. The court, while allowing the petition of the lawyer, remarked, “We do so just this once. Should happenstance bring another such case before us, the CBI will not find us quite so accommodating.” Ms Nair was on the panel of Indian Bank and rendered legal advice on titles to immovable properties. In one such set of transactions, borrowers did not submit original documents to the bank and instead, pledged them with other banks thereby defrauding the banks. “No material discloses the commission of any offence by her. On the contrary, the allegations against her are absurd and inherently improbable. There is no ground whatsoever for proceeding against her,” the court said. “It is, in our view, very likely that Ms Nair is being victimised and that the entire criminal proceeding against her is actuated by malafides and malice,” observed the court.
