JAJPUR: Dharmasala police on Sunday arrested a former banking correspondent (BC) of a nationalised bank for allegedly misappropriating around Rs 27 lakh from depositors.
The accused is Prakash Rana, a resident of Abhayapur in Jajpur’s Dharmasala block. Police said Rana was working as a BC of UCO Bank in Dharmasala. He used to collect money from customers and deposit it in their respective accounts in the local branch of the bank.
However, the accused allegedly did not deposit the collected money in customers’ accounts and managed to give them fake receipts. He was also misappropriating the money by withdrawing it from the customer accounts, said police.
Rana reportedly used to collect signed forms and Aadhaar card photocopies from depositors on the pretext of updating their know your customer (KYC), application for ATM cards and making mobile link with the accounts. Subsequently, he withdrew money from their accounts by forging their signatures, said police.
The crime came to light when one of the depositors found a mismatch of Rs 6 lakh in the bank ledger in September last year. When the news spread, many customers came to the bank to verify their respective accounts. Around Rs 21 lakh was found missing from nine more accounts.
The manager of UCO Bank’s Dharmasala branch lodged a complaint against Rana with the local police and terminated him from his service. Since then, the accused was absconding to evade arrest.
Dharmasala IIC Chinmayee Sahu said the accused misappropriated around Rs 27 lakh from the accounts of 10 customers, mostly women.
“Rana did not deposit around Rs 15 lakh collected from the depositors in the bank. He fraudulently withdrew another Rs 12 lakh from the customers’ accounts,” she said.