The Economic Offences Wing (EOW) of the State Crime Branch (CB) on Saturday arrested four persons on the charges of duping the Bilahat branch of the Odisha Gramya Bank in Cuttack of Rs 2.96 crore.
A CB official on Sunday said the accused identified as Prakash Chandra Baral (63) (ex-Branch Manager) of lalasahi in Jagatsinghpur district, Harmohan Pattanaik (57) of Rajaranapur in Nayagarh district and Hemant Swain (37) and Ranjan Kumar Mohanty alias Gyana (42), both of Naindipur in Kendrapada district, were booked under Sections 420, 467, 468, 471, 409, 120 (B) of IPC.
The accused were forwarded to court on Sunday. CB sources said the case came to light after the General Manager (Vigilance) of the bank filed a complaint with the CB on Friday saying a fraud had taken place during 2011-12 by sanction and disbursement of 148 fake loans of 1.75 lakh each under the bank’s personal loan scheme to the tune of Rs 2.96 crore in the Balihat branch.
The loans were sanctioned against forged documents showing the beneficiaries as teachers of different UP, ME and High Schools.
Harmohan, who was the Field Officer then, was the mastermind behind the crime.
His job was to verify documents of the beneficiaries before sanctioning loans. But he cheated the bank by producing false salary certificates, copies of acquittance roll and undertaking from the DDOs and Prakash as the Branch Manager then approved the documents and cleared the loans, said the CB sources.
In reality, the beneficiaries were not teachers of any school, but Hemant and Ranjan, who work as teachers in Cuttack, helped Harmohan in committing the fraud, the sources said, adding that the major amount of the loans disbursed were invested by Hemant in DP Investment and services Private limited, a chit fund company run by him.
The monthly interests earned from such investments were deposited in the bank towards repayment of loans by the accused, but after the collapse of the chit fund company following police crackdown, the accused could not deposit money in the bank, after which the fraud was detected, they said. Investigation is continuing to nab the others who were also involved in the fraud, the sources said.