Bank gold cheating case 5 employees charged

Mangalore Today News Network

Udupi, April 01, 2016: Reports say that five employees of Allahabad Bank have been charged with duping customers who had pledged gold ornaments and taken loans. The bank staff allegedly misused gold ornaments of these customers for their own private purposes here. The value of the gold ornaments of the six customers is estimated at Rs. 7.57 lakh.

According to a complaint filed by Bimal Krishnan, manager of Allahabad Bank with the Udupi Town Police, Shobha K., a customer from Ambalpady, had pledged 58.56 gm and taken a loan of 1.15 lakh. Similarly, Taj Mohammed of Kaup had pledged 43.1 gm of gold ornaments and taken a loan of Rs.78,000; Krishnanda Nayak pledged 69 gm of gold ornaments and took a loan of Rs. 1.2 lakh; Pratibha S. Rao from Udupi pledged 115.8 gm of gold ornaments and took a loan of Rs. 2 lakh; Shakuntala from Tenkanidiyur pledged 24.2 gm of gold ornaments and got a loan of Rs. 44,000; and Sridhar Rao K. from Udupi pledged 119 gm of gold ornaments and availed a loan of Rs. 2 lakh.

But five employees of the bank – K.H. Pai (the then manager of the bank), Deb Prasad, Satish Shettigar, Bhaskar and Sharath Kumar – instead of depositing the gold ornaments in the locker, used it for their own purposes, which was dereliction of duty and betrayal of trust of the customers and highly illegal. The matter came to light after Shobha came to the bank on March 10 to get back her gold ornaments. But these ornaments could not be recovered.

The Chief Manager of Zonal Office of the bank conducted an inspection on March 16 and the matter of gold ornaments of five other persons being misused also came to light. A case has been registered under Section 409 (Criminal breach of trust by public servant, or by banker, merchant or agent) of the IPC and investigations were on, the police said.  “We are enquiring with the six accused. Any arrest can be made only after there is some recovery of gold,” said a police officer.