Navi Mumbai: Unit II of Crime branch is investigating a fraud of Rs 54 crore that has been registered with Kalamboli police on Monday. The case has been registered by Sambhaji Nikam, CEO of The Mumbai Metropolitan Region Iron and Steel Market Committee against Suman Sharma for cheating and forgery.
After taking charge of the post from Sangeeta Dongre on April 1, 2024, Nikam found that the committee was being cheated since last two years by a man who posed as a manager of UCO bank in Panvel.
The complainant, after taking charge, learnt that one of the Fixed Deposits of Rs 18 crore with UCO bank was getting matured on April 15 and asked one of the staff of the committee office to ask the bank to deposit in Canara bank account and gave a letter for the same.
The staff contacted the ‘Manager’ Suman Sharma who is the one who visits the office every month to collect the cheque from them to deposit it. Sharma gave reasons of technical issues to avoid the transfer. After the committee office kept on insisting him, Sharma said that Union bank and UCO bank was going to have a merger in the first week of June and after that the transfer can happen.
Nikam firmly conveyed to Sharma to make the transfer happen before the merger to which Sharma told that the senior officials of the bank were unavailable and once they are back, he would take the permission and then do the needful.
“Nikam then asked his staff to visit the bank personally and get the transfer done. When his staff visisted the bank, he learnt that there exists no such man named Suman Sharma in the bank. He verified with the head office as well and found that there was no such employee with the bank. The accused had also issued fake receipts after taking each cheque from the committee office. The cheques were issued on an account number and not on any name and hence they never came to know about the fraud. The case is in a preliminary stage and we are investigating further,” police inspector Umesh Gawali from unit II, Crime branch said.
In the year 2022, Sharma had approached the committee office claiming to be the manager of the UCO bank and asked the committee office to deposit money that they earn through taxes and other means and guaranteed highest interest rate. After following the due procedure of discussing the proposal in board meeting, it was decided to deposit money in UCO bank from August 2022 and till now, the committee had deposited Rs 54 lakh with the bank.
