Bhopal: Six Among Five Bank Officials Booked For Fraud

Bhopal (Madhya Pradesh): Economic Offences Wing (EOW) Bhopal has registered a case against five bank officials of a nationalised bank and a private person for cheating and conspiring to grab property of an educational institution which had failed to repay the loan amount. Violating ‘standard operation procedure’ in sanctioning the loan, the bank officials extended a huge loan to a bidder to buy the college property being auctioned.

The police have registered a case under Section 420,409 and 120-B of IPC against the then branch manager Vaibhav Jain, senior manager SMECC Vaibhav Choudhary, manager SMECC Trideep Jain, chief manager Amit Kumar Mittal, senior manager SMECC Jitendra Ramchandani and directors of Vivekanand Vichardhan Education committee.

The investigation officer Hari Om Dixit said the complainant Vishnu Vilas Education Society had opened a college in village Sikandrabad under the Ratibad tehsil of Bhopal. The Society had taken a loan of Rs 7 crore from the nationalised bank. The society defaulted on the loan repayment and the account turned into NPA in 2017. The bank was secluded to take Rs 4.20 crore from the Society. On March 18,2023, the Society offered ‘one time settlement’, but the bank officials started the auction of the mortgaged property through backdate.

Again the Society offered OTS of Rs 6.25 crore to the bank, but the authorities at the bank ignored the offer and continued with executing the auction process.

The bank offered the bid of Rs 6.14 crore, but none came forward for the bidding. Meanwhile an organisation Vivekanand Vichardham Education and Samaj Kalyan Committee got the bidding. Interestingly, the organisation had no money to purchase the property. The bank officials conspired and extended a huge loan and overdraft facility to the organisation to purchase the property, violating all the bank ‘standard operation procedure’ in sanctioning the amount. “Even before the loan application could have reached the zonal office, the branch officers reached the office of the organisation and sanctioned the loan amount,” the IO said.

The organisation had no money or the assets to get a loan to buy the property, the bank officials inflated and manipulated the property documents and sanctioned the amount, he said.