This may be due to you are spamming, sending bulk emails or unethical use of Gmail account. Google team they will sure help you if you are not wrong.
This is why free email accounts should not be used for storing important business info... Also, it's a good idea to separate the activities among several accounts, so if one of them is locked, at least you have all the rest up and working.
Google won't ban the mail account unless there is a fault on its users. Never try to outsmart the free service provided by the big G.
I was not able to login to Gmail for few minutes.. when i sent 2 mails each with 20 MB attachment....
I don't think so , i have few ids which i was not using from few months but they are still active and working .
I think, there is an alternative ! Just write a email to google team bat any explaining the scenario which is also called Request mail in this aspect and make sure to mention that you are hoping the reply an earliest time.
Unless you spammed from the account or violated their TOS in some way I don't see how they would ban it
Can happen if you hook up an insecure piece of web based software to your gmail account. Say they compromise an old Drupal install and start whipping out 500+ viagra mails per hour... your account will likely be closed.