Two ex‑bank managers convicted for demanding money to approve farmer loans

Special CBI courts in Lucknow delivered verdicts on two distinct bribery investigations involving farmer credit‑card loans. In the first probe, filed on March 12, 2018, Rakesh Chandra Thakur, then branch manager of Uttar Pradesh Gramin Bank’s Haripur outlet, was caught demanding ₹6,000 from a farmer to release the first instalment of a ₹4.25 lakh loan. He was sentenced to five years of rigorous imprisonment and fined ₹25,000. The second case, registered on August 11, 2016, implicated Ravi Kumar Gupta, former assistant manager of Prataval Bank’s Paratwal Bazar branch, who asked for ₹15,000 to sanction a loan and took ₹10,000 through intermediary Inderjit Singh. Both Gupta and Singh received four years’ rigorous imprisonment and fines of ₹40,000 each.