A couple were arrested in their Bansdroni home on Wednesday for allegedly defrauding a city bank of Rs 43.45 lakh.

Police said Kaushik Bera, 33, and his wife Kasturi Bera, 30, who acted in a Tollywood film, had withdrawn the money from the Kasba branch of Andhra Bank by producing a forged letter of credit.

The letter of credit was purportedly issued by a south Mumbai branch of Central Bank of India in favour of Galaxy Traders, the couple’s company in Gangulybagan.

“The couple and one of their accomplices, Ajoy Thakur, have been arrested for cheating, forgery and criminal conspiracy. Kaushik Bera had changed his name to Krishnendu Roy,” said joint commissioner (crime) Pallab Kanti Ghosh.

A letter of credit is a bank document used for transfer of large sums of money between firms in different cities, without actual transfer of cash.

“A company can ask a bank in which it has an account to issue a letter of credit to another company. By producing the letter of credit, the second company can withdraw the money from any bank across the country. The money is deducted from the account of the first company and transferred from the first bank to the second,” explained a cop in the anti-bank fraud section.

The forged letter of credit was supposedly facilitating transfer of funds from Global Hitech in Andheri West, Mumbai, to Galaxy Traders.The forgery came to light after officials of Andhra Bank sought the withdrawn amount from the Mumbai bank.

The chief manager of Andhra bank lodged a complaint with Calcutta police on June 16. “The Mumbai bank had stopped functioning much before the letter of credit was issued. Global Hitech is also a fake company,” said Ghosh.

According to the cops, the couple also forged a letter of confirmation by the Mumbai bank to convince employees of Andhra Bank that it was a fair transaction.

Thakur was arrested from his Karl Marx Sarani home.