Ranchi, March 23: Even after being pulled up by courts for harassing people who have defaulted on paying back credit card dues or loans, the State Bank of India has raised eyebrows here with a controversial newspaper advertisement.

Photographs of half a dozen defaulters, amounts they owe to the Pandra branch of the bank, names of their respective father and their residential addresses figure prominently in the advertisement.

Above all, it warns people against dealing with the defaulters named. What is remarkable is that all of them seem to be the small fish, having secured loans ranging from five to twenty lakhs. Two of them had secured home loans worth Rs 5.27 and Rs 8.75 lakhs.

Banks are known to have lost crores to bigger people and industrialists. Why were they left out ?

A shocked secretary of Jharkhand small-scale industries association, Sunil Kumar Jaiswal, points out it is discriminatory and, therefore, questionable and legally dubious. “Publish photographs of all defaulters or do not publish them at all. There cannot be a policy of pick and choose,” he asserts.

Santosh Gupta, one of the defaulters, had taken a loan of Rs 15 lakh to start a tyre shop at Pandra bazaar two and half years ago. “Everything was fine till six months ago, but I had to shut down my shop when I failed to recover Rs 16 lakh from the MCC area,” he claimed.

He had desperately tried to conceal the newspaper from his family members, he confessed. An economics graduate from Ranchi College, 27-year- old Gupta has been trying to convince the bank to fix monthly instalments ever since he learnt about the public notice, but to no avail.

Gyanendra Pandey, another defaulter, had taken a loan of Rs 9.95 lakh. Though he had cleared the interest, he wondered how he would raise money to clear the principal amount when the bank is going around warning people against buying his property.

Pandra SBI branch manager Sanjay Kumar and manager of non-performing assets (NPA) Harihar Sao at the zonal office refused to speak.

Shashank Sinha, assistant general manager, Ranchi, however, told The Telegraph that photographs and details of all defaulters would be published but gradually.

On being asked why industrialists had been spared, Sinha blurted out, “Usually industries do not have property and price of their machinery also depreciates with time. Besides, there are legalities involved. But no one will be spared.” An official of SBI, Kokar branch, said they would publish the photographs of a few industrialists soon.