How do you bag a home loan and take the bank for a ride as well? Simple. Take the bank manager into confidence, project a property that doesn?t exist and finally, walk away with the cash.

Cracking a bank fraud case in record time, the Criminal Investigation Department (CID) on Friday rounded up five men from Regent Park, on the southern fringes of the city.

They had done just that, and even managed to mop up Rs 80 lakh from Syndicate Bank. While the five men have been rounded up, cops claim seven others are on the run.

All members of this 12-man gang had taken a loan from the same branch of Syndicate Bank, in Regent Park, prompting cops to suspect insider involvement ? particularly the bank manager?s hand ? in the fraud.

Cops claim the manager would be also rounded up.

Among the five arrested is Bibhu Nandy, Trinamul Congress block president of ward 100 of the Calcutta Municipal Corporation and a proposed Trinamul candidate for the post of councillor of this ward for this year?s municipal polls.

While cops claim Nandy had a crucial role in the plot, the party claims he has been framed to tarnish his image before the polls. Nandy is being pitted to take on the CPM councillor Buddhadeb Bose in ward 100.

?Nandy helped the members by providing them with false documents and showed one of the properties that he was promoting during bank inspection. For all this, he charged anything between Rs 40,000 and Rs 50,000 from each member of the gang that had decided to take the loan to meet personal requirements and defraud the bank,? said Durga Prasad Tarenia, deputy inspector-general of police (CID).

Manik Roy, Dilip Majumder, Swapan Roy and Asit Kumar Das, along with the others from Regent Park, had drawn up an elaborate plan to make fast money by taking a bank loan to meet their personal expenses.

The mastermind was Dilip Majumder, a former employee of the Bank of Baroda, who had been reportedly sacked for his ?irregular activities?.