In Brief
N. Ramamurthy, a bank clerk, was convicted of criminal conspiracy, breach of trust, cheating, forgery, and misappropriation involving fraudulent debits of Rs. 23,53,090 from customer accounts at State Bank of Mysore. The trial court sentenced him to concurrent sentences totaling a maximum of 7 years' imprisonment. The High Court rejected his applications for suspension of execution of sentence, erroneously calculating the total as 45 years by treating concurrent sentences as consecutive. The Supreme Court held that this fundamental miscalculation and misapplication of law (confusing suspension of conviction with suspension of sentence) vitiated the High Court's consideration and set aside its orders, directing fresh consideration of the application within two weeks.
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