NAGPUR: Senior Congress leader and former state minister Sunil Kedar has moved the Nagpur bench of the Bombay high court to seek suspension of his jail sentence in the ₹150 crore Nagpur District Central Cooperative Bank fraud case.
The petition comes ahead of the Maharashtra assembly elections expected to be held in October this year.
Kedar, a five-term lawmaker from Saoner in Vidarbha’s Nagpur district, was disqualified as a legislator after a special Nagpur court on December 23 sentenced him and five others to five years of rigorous imprisonment . Kedar is barred from contesting any polls for six years because he was handed out a jail term of more than two years.
The senior leader was accused of diverting bank funds to private entities for the purchase of government securities, leading to substantial financial losses for the Nagpur District Central Cooperative Bank.
The six were convicted for misappropriating funds of the cooperative bank at the end of legal proceedings that that lasted almost two decades.
A bench of justice Urmila Joshi-Phalke has issued notice to the state government on the petition filed by the Congress leader through senior lawyers Surendra Kumar Mishra and Virat Mishra. The court will take up the petition after the summer vacation.