A macabre sit-in staged by the kin of a 70-year-old woman with her dead body in front of the Karuvannur Cooperative Bank in Thrissur district has once again brought to light the magnitude of the Cooperative Bank Scam in the State.
Philomina, a retired Government nurse, met with a sad end as her husband failed to mobilise money for her medical expenses. “Though I had deposited Rs 28 lakh with the Karuvannur Co-operative Bank, they refused to give back even Rs 50,000 for my wife’s medical treatment. The delay in getting medial aid led to her death as she was suffering from an infection in the brain,” said Devassy.
Kerala’s Minister for Cooperation V N Vasavan had told the Legislative Assembly last Thursday that 164 cooperative banks in the State have gone bust and were not in a position to return the money to depositors. Though R Bindu, Kerala Minister for Higher Education (who is also the wife of the former CPI-M Secretary and LDF convenor) rushed to Thrissur and decried the sit-in as an attempt by the Opposition parties to politicise the issue, facts contradict what the Minister has said. TM Mukundan, a 59-year-old Congress leader had committed suicide in July 2021 following the bank’s decision to “attach” his plot of land for his failure to pay back a loan of Rs 80 lakh which he had availed. But later on, it was disclosed by the Bank that he had availed of only Rs 25 lakh as loan.
The Coop-erative Depart-ment had dissolved the director board of the Bank which was full of CPI-M members and entrusted the administration to an assistant registrar. The sit-in staged by Philomina’s relations show that no action has been taken by the powers that be to bring the Bank back to normalcy, Jose Vallur, president, Thrissur District Congress Committee. “The Bank, which had cheated its depositors to the tune of Rs 300 crore continues to loot them. The deaths of Mukundan and Philomiona were murders committed by the CPI-M controlled Bank,” said Vallur.
Since Thursday last many more persons have come out against the Bank for its refusal to pay back the money they had put in term deposits. O N Jayanarayanan Namboodirippadu, a Thrissur based chartered accountant who is an auditor for many cooperative Banks said the Cooperative sector, especially the Banks were enmeshed in a cobweb of corruption. “There are more than 7.5 million members in the cooperative societies that control these banks. Karuvannur Bank is just the tip of the ice berg. More such scams would start coming out in days to come,” said Namboodirippadu.