Prosenjit on the sets on Greftaar

Rasika and Indranil Chatterjee produced the film Greftaar, starring Prosenjit, last year and now they themselves are facing arrest.

The married couple are charged with taking money off banks not by robbing, like Bonnie and Clyde, the characters in the famous Hollywood movie of the same name. But by cheating, more in the line of Bunty aur Babli, though the Bollywood couple would rather try and sell the Taj Mahal than soil their hands filching nationalised banks.

Like the film couples, though, they have been on the run for six months. On Monday, Calcutta High Court rejected the anticipatory bail plea of Rasika.

They allegedly duped five government-owned banks of Rs 2.25 crore. Also accused with the Chatterjees, for whom Greftaar was the first foray into filmdom, are Kshudiram Chakraborty, who was the executive producer and who, too, is in hiding, and a chartered accountant, S.K. Das, who had helped defraud the banks and has been arrested. Safikullah Khan, one of the guarantors, has also been picked up.

Rasika, 43, and Indranil, 48, allegedly cheated Allahabad Bank, UCO Bank, Bank of Baroda, Canara Bank and Karnataka Bank by handing them fake documents.

On December 18, 2007, the manager of Karnataka Bank, Rashbehari Avenue branch, lodged a complaint with Tollygunge police station, alleging that the duohad taken an overdraft of Rs 1. 25 crore from his bank.

“They had taken loans from these five banks for making the film. As mortgage, they submitted the title deeds of six flats on Syed Amir Ali Avenue. Later, the banks found that four of the flats didn’t exist, while the other two had been mortgaged with other banks,” said state lawyers. They informed the court that by mortgaging the flats to the other banks, the couple had already taken a loan of Rs 1 crore.

Greftaar, which had an average run at the box office, was all about the fight of an honest police officer, played by Prosenjit, against a corrupt politician. Rasika and Indranil, it now turns out, made a movie about honesty with ill-gotten money.