KARUVANNUR(THRISSUR): The fire on the funeral pyre of T M Mukundan has died down, but the embers of despair and pain are still alive in the minds of his dear ones. Then there is the threat of revenue recovery. Chairs loosely arranged under a tarpaulin sheet greet you at the house, but Prabhavathi — Mukundan’s wife — is too sad to welcome any visitor. She stares at you, takes a deep breath and breaks into tears.
Mukundan, the block secretary of Congress and former standing committee chairman of Porathissery panchayat, hanged to death on July 22. Local residents had seen him visiting the Karuvannur Cooperative Bank the day before. He was desperate after receiving a revenue recovery notice demanding to pay Rs 80 lakh as loan arrears. Mukundan had taken a loan of only Rs 30 lakh.
Mukundan’s son Dheeraj, 27, who works as a machine operator in Sharjah and returned on hearing his father’s death, says their family never needed such a hefty loan. “My sister was married off in 2014, but the retirement benefits of my father who worked as an office assistant at Wadakkancherry Vyasa College were enough to meet that expense,” he said.
A glance at their 100-year-old ancestral house proved his point. It has not been renovated. They have 16 cents of land, which is worth Rs 45 lakh. “Will any bank issue a loan double the value of the land?,” asks Dheeraj. The loan fraud reported at the bank is getting bigger and what the joint registrar has revealed after the probe is just a fragment of a deeper malaise, say local residents.
The loan defaulters are not rich. The bank has defrauded farmers, vendors and daily wagers. Many of them never applied or availed of loans and the recovery notices reminding of colossal loans terrify them. If the government fails to address their woes, Karuvannur may witness more suicides.
Cheated by bank, many find life at a crossroads
At Pullathara in Karalam village, Sadanandan, a handicapped lottery ticket vendor, stares at a revenue recovery notice of Rs 39 lakh and says his family, including wife Jaya and son Sumesh, has no other way but to follow in Mukundan’s footsteps. “We had taken a loan of Rs 10 lakh in 2012 to purchase 10 cents of land. We had been paying Rs 21,000 as EMI for years. Four years ago we defaulted on the payment. In 2019, we got a revenue recovery notice of Rs 39 lakh. We used to pay the EMI to director board member Salini Satish who recently went abroad. The bank says we have not paid the EMI. We don’t know what to do,” says Sadanandan.
Sai Lakshmi of Karuvannur, who owns 13 cents of land, had applied for a loan of Rs 10 lakh two years ago. After six months, she got a notice asking to pay Rs 3 crore. She didn’t avail of a single penny as loan but the bank authorities have sanctioned Rs 50 lakh each against the names of six. Sai Lakshmi and her husband Harikumar are afraid to speak about their ordeal. Raju of Mutrathilparambil, a van driver has received a notice to repay a Rs 50-lakh loan he never applied for. Anju Paul from Irinjalakuda has lost Rs 10 lakh from her account while C V Surendran has lost Rs 7 lakh put in a joint account. The list goes on.
“The members are queuing up in front of the bank every day to withdraw their deposit, but it pays only Rs 10,000 to a depositor a week. People throng outside the bank from 2am to take token but only 150 are distributed daily,” said Paul, who runs a tea shop near the bank head quarters.
The Crime Branch team probing the fraud has booked a case against the bank’s former secretary T R Sunil Kumar, former manager M K Biju, former senior accountant C K Jilse, commission agents Kiran and A K Bijoy, and Reji Anilkumar, an accountant at the bankrun supermarket. The fraud has taken place with the knowledge of bank manager K K Divakaran and CPM area committee member V M Manoj, who was in charge of the party’s sub-committee that looked into the affairs of the bank, said Suresh M V, the whistle blower who was dismissed from the bank on August 20, 2018.
Suresh was working as the manager-in-charge at the Civil Station branch and had 20 years of experience. He was a party member since 1988 and had served as panchayat secretary of the DYFI and a local committee member of CPM.
“In 2003, the bank had taken the distribution of Rubco mattress in Thrissur and Ernakulam districts and received good returns, thanks to the 12% commission. The following year, the bank appointed a commission agent who was given 8% commission. I raised this issue in the party sub-committee and gave a written complaint to district secretary Baby John in 2005,” said Suresh.
According to him, a few employees with the support of director board members had been sanctioning multiple loans using the documents submitted by bank members. The loans were sanctioned to fictitious persons and deposited in real estate business. Some of the employees have built resorts in Idukki district, said Suresh.
“The CPM had deputed a two-member commission to probe the allegations, but the report did not see the light of the day. From 2010, there have been allegations of loan fraud. In 2019, a party commission led by former MP P K Biju and district secretariat member Shajahan probed the allegations. The panel had found substance in the allegations, but the party failed to take action. The Crime Branch should investigate the financial dealings of the bank employees and the director board members who controlled the bank during the past 10 years,” he said.
Attender, peon among admins of bank software
T’Puram: Major loopholes in the banking software used by Karuvannur service cooperative bank came to the aid of the cartel of employees who had committed a loan fraud worth I300 crore over the years. Investigators suspect that the loopholes in the software and negligence in software security were purposeful acts on part of the senior employees for facilitating illegal deals. B Sreejan reports.