A racket run by a trio has defrauded Rs 1.88 crore from a State Bank of India (SBI) branch by taking loans in the name of employees of a fictitious company.

A former manager of the branch, Pradip Samanta, was suspended for approving the loans without following the norms.

Deputy commissioner (headquarters) Vineet Goyal said Muktinath Chowdhury, Samar Dutta and Radheshyam Sharma had approached the manager of SBI’s BT Road branch in Chitpur in May last year, claiming that they were the heads of a social welfare organisation.

“They had said they would open the salary accounts of their 85 employees in the branch if the bank granted them individual loans,” added Goyal.

Samanta approved the loans, but none of the “employees” paid their EMIs at the end of the month. After Samanta was transferred, Samir Saha took charge as branch manager. After an internal inquiry, he lodged a complaint with Chitpur police station on Thursday.

Police found that the address given by the trio of their office was of a small room in Sodepur. There were no workers there.

Residents of the locality said a group of people rented the room for a brief period last year.