CUTTACK: The Economic Offences Wing (EOW) of Crime Branch on Wednesday arrested a former branch head of the UCO Bank on charges of swindling a whopping over Rs 3.25 crore by sanctioning fake car and business loans.
The accused 48-year-old Siba Prasad Das was arrested from Trisulia in Cuttack. EOW officials said Das had carried out the fraud between 2021 and 2025 while he was posted as the head of the bank’s Old Secretariat branch and then the Salepur branch. The fraud had come to light two months back following which he was placed on suspension.
Police began investigation in this regard after receiving complaint from the deputy general manager and zonal head of UCO Bank, Cuttack on June 19. As per the complaint, Das had sanctioned 22 car loans and two business loans totalling `3,25,43,000 by manipulating the official records and documents.
During investigation, it came to light that Das fabricated quotations purportedly issued for the purchase of vehicles and used the same for the sanction and disbursement of car loans. Several car loans had been sanctioned in respect of vehicles that had already been purchased, by falsely projecting them as new ones.
The investigators also found that Das had tampered with the copies of CIBIL records and prepared forged registration certificates, KYC documents, insurance papers and other vehicle-related records to facilitate the processing and disbursement of the loans.
EOW officials said the total loan amount of Rs 3.25 crore was directly credited to the personal bank accounts of Das, who had opened savings bank accounts in the names of certain borrowers without obtaining the requisite KYC documents and other mandatory records, with the sole purpose of facilitating the repayment of the fraudulently sanctioned loans.
“The loan repayments in those accounts were actually funded by the accused, to conceal the true source of payment and create a false impression that the borrowers were regularly servicing the loan accounts,” they said.
Out of the total 24 fraudulent loans, Das had sanctioned 16 loans amounting to over Rs 1.85 crore and eight loans amounting to over `1.39 crore during his incumbency as branch head of UCO Bank, Salepur branch and Old Secretariat branch respectively. Around 24 loan files, fake salary slips and forged vehicle quotations were seized from him. “Further investigation is underway to ascertain if more people are involved in the fraud,” EOW officials said.
