Over Rs 15 cr embezzled from J&K Bank; car loans on fictitious salary slips

‘National Horticulture Mission’ account opened on-email at Mendhar branch

VIVEK SHARMA

JAMMU: Believe it or not, tech savvy fraudsters have stung and duped the Jammu and Kashmir Bank of crores of rupees by adopting an innovative mechanism. But as said ‘crime never goes scot-free’, the fraud has surfaced and the Bank’s Vigilance cell has reportedly sounded alert and geared up after few car loans linked to one major account turned defunct. The luxury cars like Audi and BMWs have been purchased by the dupers using fictitious salary slips.

An account in the name of National Horticulture Mission was opened through an e-mail last year in Mendhar Branch of the J&K Bank as a government account, which started operating with deposits of lakhs of rupees purportedly from the government.
Consequently around 40 more individual bank accounts of the employees were opened and the salaries from the main account were transferred to the account of each employee. After few months, the employees, though fictitious, used their salary slips and bank statements, applied for car loans from various J&K Bank branches at Rajouri, Gangyal, Jammu University Campus and Shalamar Road in Jammu.
The loans were approved and luxury cars were purchased by the so-called employees. An Audi car purchased on loan from Jammu landed in probe as one of loanees stopped paying installments after two months and subsequently on initial inquiry the loanee’s address also turned out to be fictitious. On initial probe, other loanees’ addresses too were found to be fake.
This raised eyebrows of J&K Bank’s management which started probing the matter and found that the main account was also fictitious. There is no such organisation under name and style “National Horticulture Mission,” being run by the UT or central government. The Vigilance cell is now making all out efforts to gather all the evidences while the Bank management has not so far decided to handover the case to police for detailed probe and fix the responsibility of bank officers and to book the fraudsters, who used fake documents to embezzle over Rs 15 Crore.
The Bank management is tightlipped over this major scandal. However, after a report of the vigilance cell of the Bank, the case has to be transferred to the J&K Police’s Crime Branch or J&K Anti Corruption Bureau or CBI for detailed investigations.