6 bank employees booked for Rs 7 crore fraud

Thane, Nov 26: Seven persons, six of them employees of a co-operative bank here, have been booked for allegedly defrauding customers and the bank to the tune of around Rs 7 crore, police said today.

An FIR in this regard was registered last evening and later the case transferred to the Economic Offences Wing (EOW) for further probe, Inspector G D Pingle of Chitalsar Police Station said.

The accused, including a branch manager, were booked under IPC sections related to cheating, forgery, dishonest misappropriation of property, criminal breach of trust, falsification of accounts and also provisions of the IT Act, one of them related to hacking of computer system, he said.

The alleged crime took place at Lok Puram branch of the CKP Co-operative Bank. The case was registered based on a complaint submitted by Raju Phanse, a Director of the bank.

These seven persons indulged in malpractices to defraud the bank's customers and the lender to the tune of Rs 6,92,19,047, said Phanse. According to the complaint, the accused tampered with the bank's computer systems and receipts of depositors and diverted funds from their accounts to a particular account to facilitate benefit of cash credit (short-term loan) to its holder.

They also opened a number of new accounts without following regulations and diverted funds deposited in them to this particular account held by Satyen Salva. The man who got benefit from the cash credit, which was beyond his eligibility, failed to repay the loan, thus cheating the bank and its customers, police said.

Those named in the FIR are Anjali Pisal (Branch Manager), Chandrashekar Karve (another senior officer), Unnati Thombre (clerk), Satish Jamble, Vikas Kubal and Narendra Jadhav (all peons) and Salva.

They tampered with the bank's computer system and software to facilitate these illegal transactions, police said, adding no arrest has been made.

The bank was under an administrator between 2012 and 2015 after the RBI dissolved its board following complaints of mismanagement in its functioning.