Bhubaneswar, June 24: The deputy manager of a private bank, who was arrested yesterday for embezzling Rs 1.3 crore over the last two years, was today sent to jail after a local court rejected his bail plea.
The accused, Purna Chandra Sarkar, is deputy manager (clearance) of Kotak Mahindra bank located in Kharavela Nagar. He was arrested yesterday by the Kharavela Nagar police on charges of cheating and forgery after the bank lodged a complaint against him.
The police said they had registered a case against the deputy manager under sections 420 (cheating and dishonestly inducing delivery of property), 467 (forgery of valuable security, will etc), 468 (forgery for purpose of cheating) and 471 (using as genuine a forged document or electronic record) of the Indian Penal Code following a complaint from Sanjib Uppal, the northeast regional head of the bank.
Sources in the bank said that Sarkar was in charge of cheque clearance and had bungled money in 2009. Sources said he, instead of clearing the cheques according to Reserve Bank of India cheque clearance system, would cleverly divert the money by depositing the cheques in Kotak Mahindra Security Limited, another arm of the company which dealt with shares and equities. He used to divert all the money of customers to the share market, earn profits for himself and then re-deposit the original amount in the accounts of the persons whose money he had used.
The bank officials said most of the investments were made in the name of his relatives and family members. “As he was the head of the clearance wing of the bank, he knew how to evade the attention of the bank,” said an official. But the official did not comment on how this had gone undetected for last two years.
Sources said the matter came to notice of the higher authorities of the bank once RBI sent details of the cheque clearances electronically to the corporate office of the bank in Delhi and Mumbai. Though soft copies of the cheque clearances were sent to the bank by RBI, Sarkar used to manipulate them.
After the matter came to the notice of the top officials of the bank, an internal probe was started by the Uppal. He found huge discrepancies in the accounts being handled by Sarkar.
Sources said that instead of cooperating with the authorities, he tried to evade answering questions and hence a complaint was lodged with the police on June 21. “Our internal probe is going on. We will check whether any other bank official was involved in this or not,” said the official.
Kharavela Nagar police today went to another private bank in the city where Sarkar has a joint account with his father and sought details of the same. “The bank has assured us deactivation of the account,” said a police officer. The police are also looking into other bank accounts of Sarkar in the city.
Jail for official
An under secretary of housing and urban development department, arrested today for amassing wealth disproportionate to his known sources of income, was remanded in 14 days judicial custody after his bail plea was rejected. In the additional chief magistrate Santosh Mohanty's court, where the accused was produced, vigilance officers, submitted documents pertaining to his property worth over Rs 3.46 crore.The officers had conducted raids on the houses of the under secretary on May 28 following allegations against him for acquiring disproportionate wealth. Four teams of officers had conducted raids at various places and found that the accused owned a five-storied building in the Unit IX area that cost more than Rs 2 crore.
