Aurangabad: A district and sessions court here on Wednesday sentenced three persons, including a woman, to seven years' rigorous imprisonment after holding them guilty of abetment in the suicide of a 50-year-old branch manager employed with the State Bank of India.The manager, Kishore Anand, had ended his life in March 2010 at the SBI housing quarters located in the jurisdiction of the Cidco police station. He had left a seven-page suicide note which blamed the three accused of pressuring and harassing him through various means and forcing him to sanction a loan to the woman under a scheme of the Mahatma Phule Backward Class Development Corporation Ltd.Anand hailed from Mumbai and was posted at the SBI's Jadhavwadi branch. Based on his note, a case of abetment in the suicide was registered against the woman, Anita Gaikwad (40), of Yashodhara Colony, Cidco, Kishore Mhaske (47) of Qila-E-Ark and Sunil Songire (45) of Komti Galli, Padampura.Considering the gravity of the case, investigating officer Krishna Shinde had completed the probe in just six months and filed a 100-page chargesheet.Additional public prosecutor Uday Pande, who represented the state, said Gaikwad wanted a Rs 2 lakh loan from SBI through the scheme to start a cloth shop. "However, when the bank refused to sanction the loan citing her failure in meeting the criteria, she and her two accomplices resorted to pressure tactics," he said.Pande told the court of additional sessions judge S S Nair that Gaikwad, apart from registering four cases against Anand, had also assaulted him along with the other two accused. She had registered cases under the atrocities Act against Anand as well as of molestation and voluntarily causing hurt.Police records state that Gaikwad had submitted her file for the loan at the fag end of 2009. The file reached the bank in February 2010. The trial in the case begin in 2012.

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