KATHMANDU, Dec 21: The Supreme Court on Thursday overturned its own three-year-old judgments that slapped jail sentences to two Agricultural Development Bank staffers convicted of defrauding the bank.

A three-member special bench of justices Sharada Prasad Ghimire, Dambar Bahadur Shahi and Purushottam Bhandari issued the judgment reversing its previous judgment that had upheld a Special Court conviction of the bank staffers who had each been slapped three months jail and Rs 10,000 fine.

The bench issued clean chits to the bank's former accounts officer Govinda Prasad Joshi and assistant account officer Min Bahadur Joshi of the central office of the Agricultural Development Bank. They were earlier found guilty of issuing a total of Rs 10.9 million in loans on different dates to six various firms on the basis of forged documents and by bypassing the standard loan issuance process.

The three had been convicted based on a case filed by the Commission for the Investigation of Abuse of Authority.

Recently, the apex court had acquitted former chief of Nepal Police Motilal Bohara overturning Special Court order that slapped him jail sentence of a year and a half for accumulating property disproportionate to his known sources of income. Currently, there are around 700 cases related to corruption, bribery, bank fraud and fake academic certificates pending at the apex court.

 
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