Three people, including an SBI assistant branch manager and a businessman from Bhuleshwar, have been detained for allegedly faking the documents of a deceased man and withdrawing INR 1.39 crore from his PPF account.
The incident came to light when the father of the deceased man found out that someone had falsely claimed his son's money, who passed away in the US in 2008. A complaint was filed by Hanumant Prasad, a Warden Road homeowner, at the Marine Drive police station in March 2023 regarding his son's PPF account at the SBI Backbay Reclamation branch in Nariman Point.
According to Prasad, he had asked the bank to transfer money from his son's PPF account into his account a year after the son passed away. However, after several follow-ups, he urged his manager Amrutlal Patel to monitor the transfer of PPF monies, but he never heard back.
It wasn't until last year that the father discovered that INR 1.39 crores from the deceased son's account had been transferred to the account of a fraudster. The money was deposited into Amit Prasad's account at the Goregaon branch of ICICI Bank, which is now closed, and then to two other accounts: Gajanan Enterprises and Lakshmi Enterprises. The money was then transferred under several names to Yes Bank and Equitas Small Finance.
The investigation by the Marine Drive police led to the detention of three individuals: Hawala operator Rajesh Panchal, assistant branch manager Priyank Sharma, and businessman Padam Sen. The police also searched for two more recipients of the payments.
During the investigation, a suspect named Tansukh Joshi confessed to receiving fraudulent funds from Prem Sharma who claimed to have sent the entire sum to Rajesh Panchal. The money was deposited into two accounts—those of Padma Sen and another Nilesh Kadam alias Satya—at Sharma's request because Panchal was a close friend of the banker. When a police squad raided Sen's home, they found cash and gold jewellery worth a total of INR 4 lakh.
Share
Tweet
