SANGUEM
With pressure mounting from all sides and with multiple cases of alleged misappropriation of money deposited by elderly citizens coming to the fore, Curchorem police on Tuesday arrested the branch manager of a nationalised bank at Curchorem in connection with the theft and fraudulent issuance of fixed bank deposit receipts.
Earlier on Monday, police had arrested the main accused Tanvi Vast in the incident. Both the accused, the branch manager, Ananda Jadhav, a native of Satara-Maharashtra and residing at Pontemol-Curchorem, and Tanvi Vast, were remanded to two days in police custody by the Judicial Magistrate First Class Quepem.
While the amount siphoned from the elderly citizens could run over Rs 60 lakh, including some gold ornaments which were meant to be kept in safe deposit lockers, the police so far have received four complaints.
More complaints are likely to pour in the next few days after local MLA Nilesh Cabral appealed to victims to come forward and lodge
their complaints.
Cabral who personally visited the victims at their residences assured all possible help and support from the government machinery and the police in recovery their lost money and gold ornaments.
As of now, four complaints have been lodged. Incidentally, most of the victims are elderly citizens who had invested all their hard-earned resources to make fixed deposits.
In the instant case, Tanvi Vast, who was working for Vision India Services, was accused of persuading elderly citizens to make fixed deposits with the Bank and later, would allegedly siphon the money into her account using their SIM cards and OTP.
Instances have also come to light of bogus hand-written fixed deposit receipts being tendered to the elderly citizens with no records at the bank of their deposits.
While another lady complained of her gold ornaments going missing after the same were handed over to the accused for keeping in safe deposit locker.
The incident of missing gold ornaments came to fore during her visit to the bank last week when she found fake replicas of her gold ornaments being placed in the safe deposit locker.
Initially, the victims had declined to lodge police complaints as the accused Tanvi Vast had assured to return the money to the victims and after being told by the accused that they will not get anything if they lodge a police complaint and if she were to get arrested.
Meanwhile, the daring daylight fraud at the nationalised bank has shocked people in Curchorem, with a large number of people rushing to the bank to check the status of their transactions and safe deposit lockers.
Both the accused persons have been arrested on charges of criminal breach of trust and cheating.
