Mumbai, Oct. 2: Private bank officials who authorise agents to recover loans using coercion could face charges of abetting suicide in Maharashtra, deputy chief minister R.R. Patil has said.

Patil told a news conference at the state secretariat last evening that the government was examining if senior bank officials could be covered under Section 306 of the Indian Penal Code, relating to abetment of suicide.

Offences under the section are punishable with imprisonment up to 10 years and a fine.

On Sunday, Patil had said the government would apply the policy used against moneylenders, who harassed cotton farmers in six suicide-prone districts of Vidarbha, to deal with coercion by bank recovery agents. In Vidarbha, the government had run a campaign against money-lenders, arresting many of them after the spate of suicides.

“The banks have been charging interest rates ranging between 30 and 50 per cent on personal loans. These are very high rates. We are checking if such high interest rates are in line with the Reserve Bank of India’s lending norms,” he said.

Patil, who is also the home minister, said loan recovery agencies were not registered with the government. “I have given orders to find out if the appointment of recovery agents is within the legal parameters set by the RBI,” he said.

If the agencies have legal sanctity, the minister said, they would have to follow a legal recovery process instead of coercion.

The comments come two weeks after a debtor harassed by loan recovery agents hired by ICICI Bank committed suicide.

The agents — Nishant Nagrale, 29, Hiren Vaidya, 25, Kailash Choudhary, 27, and Tushar Pargaonkar, 27, — were arrested on charges of abetting suicide.

Prakash Sarwankar, 38, had committed suicide on September 17 after he was hounded by the four. The jobless and ailing Andheri resident had defaulted on instalment payments on a loan of Rs 50,000. He is survived by his wife and three daughters.

Last week, ICICI Bank announced it would give Rs 15.5 lakh as compensation to the family.

A manager of HDFC Bank and two loan recovery agents were also arrested last week on a complaint by a customer who alleged they had forced him to pay Rs 46,000 on a loan of Rs 5,000.

GPS in patrol vans

Patil said the installation of Global Positioning System (GPS) in police patrol vans has reduced the response time to emergencies to an average of seven minutes.