On Wednesday, the High Court of Orissa upheld the orders of a special vigilance court that had sentenced Congress MLA Mohammed Moquim to three years of imprisonment in a case of loan forgery effectively sealing his chances of fighting the coming state polls next month.
The special vigilance court in September 2022 had sentenced Moquim & three others to three years of rigorous imprisonment & penalty of ₹50,000 each over submitting forged & fabricated documents to avail a loan of ₹1.5 crore from Odisha Rural Housing & Development Corporation, a state agency.
Moquim & others had given documents including BDA plan, project estimate, fire prevention certificate that turned out to be forged.
The loan proposal was neither placed before the board of directors of ORHDC nor before the loan committee for appraisal of the loan & approval. No spot/site verification was made before processing the loan application & during disbursement of the loan amount. The loan was disbursed without sufficient & adequate security & no tripartite agreement was executed between the parties.
In October 2022, following an appeal from the Congress legislator, the HC stayed his conviction, describing it as “an exceptional case” & allowed him to continue as member of the state assembly.
Moquim also challenged the propriety of the trial court’s order before the Orissa high court on the grounds that it was incurably defective & suffered from gross infirmities.
Dismissing the Congress MLA’s petition, the HC said his criminal intent is established having direct nexus with the offences committed. There are sufficient evidences available on record against Moquim for his active role in getting the loan sanctioned in favour of the company.
“In addition to this, the loan was sanctioned on the security of the personal guarantee, indemnity & assurance of Moquim. It is further indicated from the evidences that he along with other co-accused persons have intentionally & knowingly used series of forged documents, as discussed above, to get the loan sanctioned in favour of accused company without any justification. It is true that mere inability to repay the loan amount would not give rise to criminal prosecution. But here in the present case, fraudulent & dishonest intention of Moquim as the MD of Metro Builders has been established through prosecution evidence to show his intention to get the loan sanctioned & such conduct of Moquim from the very date of application for loan is clear on record to satisfy the existence of mens rea on his part,” the HC said in its order.
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