Officers of Maniktala police station have arrested the headmistress of a school in Singhi Bagan, along with three others, for defrauding a bank.

Pratima Roy Chaudhury, the headmistress, had allegedly produced fake papers in support of an application for home loan.

Deputy commissioner of police (ESD) Vineet Goyal said Roy Chaudhury had engaged Kushal Banerjee, who worked as an agent in the Maniktala area, to help her obtain a home loan from a bank to pay off her debts.

Banerjee, police said, had been introduced to promoter Tapan Kumar Das some time ago and had subsequently become close to him by getting him buyers for apartments in a building he was constructing.

In the course of the friendship, Banerjee gathered details about Das?s account in a private bank in Maniktala and how often he operated the account.

Armed with the information, cops claimed, Banerjee, Roy Chaudhury and the other two chalked a plan to obtain a loan from Bank of Punjab by producing fake documents of an apartment in a non-existent housing estate.

One posed as a promoter of the proposed building, another as the owner of the land and the third member as an office-bearer. Having drafted all the documents, the three applied for a loan, the investigators said.

The bank granted around Rs 5.4 lakh in a cheque. Banerjee took the cheque to Das?s bank in Maniktala and opened an account in his name to deposit it, the officers stated.

A few days after depositing the cheque, Banerjee withdrew the entire amount from the bank, saying that he needed the money for an emergency. The bank believed him and paid the entire sum.

The bank officials had no clue about the fraud till Banerjee turned up a few days later to apply for a credit card posing as Das, said police.

?The bank informed Das, who turned up to find that Banerjee had been using his identity. The police was then brought into the picture,? Goyal explained.

Following his arrest, Banerjee spilled the beans, revealing that he was working in conjunction with three others. On the basis of his confession, cops arrested the three, including the headmistress.

Officers from Maniktala police station claimed that during interrogation, Roy Chaudhury had confessed to her crime. She even admitted to applying to another bank for a house-building loan, police said.

The accused have been remanded in police custody till July 28.