PATNA: An ordinary paan shop owner in Jharkhand’s Giridih district was perplexed beyond all limits to find that his bank account had more than Rs 9.99 crore, a phenomenon that investigators say seems to be the handiwork of unscrupulous people desperate to salvage their huge black money.
When Pappu Kumar Tiwary, an unassuming young man running a paan shop at Gandey in Jharkhand’s northern Giridih district, visited an ATM to withdraw Rs 1,000, he got a hard shock to find his account with State Bank of India (SBI) blocked by the bank authorities and therefore unable to deliver him any money at all through an ATM.
But there was a harder shock for him when he visited a nearby SBI branch to ask why he cannot withdraw Rs 1,000 from his own account. “I had Rs 4,580 in my account and wanted to withdraw Rs 1,000.
But when I spoke with SBI officials, I was too shocked to find that I had become unbelievably rich without having even the slightest knowledge about it,” said Tiwary, in his early thirties.
“The bank officials asked me too many questions and were unwilling to believe that I was an ordinary man doing the hard labour of running a paan shop from morning to 10 PM every day,” said a bemused Tiwary. He was alarmed when the bank officials called the police. It was after some more interrogation that they told him that his bank account had Rs 9,99,95,498 and that the cyber crime unit of Hyderabad had blocked his account.
Tiwary said his bank account never had any suspicious transactions earlier and that the highest amount ever in his account was Rs 1.5 lakh.
“I and everyone in my family were worried to find money as high as Rs 10 crore in my account. We could not sleep that night. I do not want to be rich without having worked as hard as necessary,” he added.
“The cyber crime branch in Hyderabad noted the transactions and the huge amount deposited in this account. The computer system automatically blocked this account. The matter is being investigated,” said Sanjay Ghose, a senior SBI official.