Banks Deputy Manager held for cheating

BHUBANESWAR: A deputy manager of a private bank was arrested by police for allegedly bungling a whopping Rs 1.3 crore from the bank over the last several years. Purna Sarkar, Deputy Manager (Clearance) with Kotak Mahindra Bank, located at Kharavel Nagar, was arrested on charges of cheating and forgery after the bank lodged a complaint with the police.Sarkar, who was in charge of cheque clearance at the bank, used to bungle with the instruments since 2009, bank sources said. Instead of getting the cheques passed through the RBI clearing house, he would cleverly park the instruments in Kotak Mahindra Security Ltd, another arm of the company which dealt with shares and equities. Most of the investments were made in the names of his family members. Since he was head of the clearance, he knew of methods to evade attention of the bank. Sources informed that the matter came to light once RBI sent details of the cheque clearances electronically to the bank’s corporate offices in Delhi and Mumbai. Earlier, soft copies were being sent and Sarkar used to manipulate them.Once the matter caught the attention of bank’s big wigs, an internal investigation started and the North Eastern head of the bank Sanjiv Upal was given the charge of the probe. He apparently found huge discrepancies and the responsibility was fixed on Sarkar, who confessed to the bungling of Rs 1.3 crore. However, instead of cooperating he tried to evade action and a complaint was lodged with the police. He has been booked under Sections 420, 467, 468 and 471 of the IPC.