Cuttack, Dec. 28: Mamta Nayak, a member of a self-help group at Padmapur, was shocked to find that money was deposited and withdrawn from her Jan Dhan account without her knowledge during the post-demonetisation drive.

Like Nayak's, the accounts of several others have been allegedly used in an unauthorised manner to deposit and withdraw cash. Over Rs 2 lakh have been deposited in the Jan Dhan accounts of 13 members of women self-help groups at Mutarifa village in Jagatpur police limits in a suspicious manner.

Sources said a micro finance company, Swayanshri Micro Credit Services, operating at Jagatpur had allegedly misused the zero-balance accounts of the group members to convert black money into white. It had opened the Jan Dhan accounts on behalf of the 13 women members in July after taking all their documents from them.

"I had opened the account by depositing my Aadhaar card and other documents to the micro finance company in July with an initial deposit of Rs 120. On December 19, I found that there was a credit balance of over Rs 7,000 in my account," said Nayak.

Nayak said that after updating the passbook, she came to know that funds to the tune of Rs 2,500 had been deposited several times and subsequently withdrawn from her account from November 20 till December 3.

Nayak's husband Jagdish works as a painter. His income is less than Rs 7,000 a month.

"I have not deposited a single paise since the scrapping of the old 500 and 1,000 notes in November. I was surprised when my wife informed that she has now a balance of over Rs 7,000 in her account," said Jagdish.

Tulasi self-help group president Jayshree Nayak told The Telegraph that the Jan Dhan accounts of all 13 women members were opened at the State Bank of India branch at Gopinathpur.

"The micro finance company earlier informed us that a loan of Rs 5 lakh had been sanctioned in the name of the group. Though we had not received any cash, money has been deposited in our accounts for over 14 times since November 20 and withdrawn without our knowledge," said Jayashree.

The group members said the micro finance company had provided a loan of Rs 33,000 to each member of the group in 2015.

Most of the members, who had earlier availed themselves of the loan from the micro credit finance company, cleared the amount. "But, we are yet to understand how money was deposited and subsequently withdrawn from our accounts," said Sanjukta Nayak, another member of the group.

The members have lodged a complaint against the company officials. "Today, a few members reported this matter, and prima facie it appears that nominal amounts have been repeatedly deposited and subsequently transferred from one account to another," said deputy commissioner of police Sanjeev Arora.

Arora said a team of senior officials of Jagatpur police station would shortly examine the bank officials in connection with the incident. "We will certainly report the matter to the Income Tax officials if the cash deposits have been made in an unscrupulous manner," Arora said.