The Hindu : Kerala / Thiruvananthapuram News : Murder: police summon private bank employee

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Kerala - Thiruvananthapuram

Murder: police summon private bank employee

Staff Reporter

Links with gang which killed Althara Vinesh

Gang helps repossess defaulters’ vehicles
Inquiry into money lending operations of the gang

Thiruvananthapuram: The city police have summoned the manager of a leading private bank for questioning in connection with the investigation into the financial activities of the gang suspected to be responsible for the murder of Vineesh, alias Althara Vinesh, at Vellayambalam.

The police suspected the manager to have engaged the gang on behalf of the bank for repossessing vehicles from owners who failed to remit their monthly mortgage payments.

Official sources said the documents seized from the house of one of the gang members indicated that the group purchased most of the vehicles they repossessed at a rate far less than the current market value of relatively new used cars.

Huge profit

The gang then made a huge profit by reselling the vehicle at a higher price.

The police suspect that the gang turned away genuine buyers interested in participating in vehicle auctions conducted by the bank so that they could buy the repossessed vehicles at a cheap rate.

It was also possible that the auctions were never perhaps announced in the media and conducted secretively without the knowledge of the bank’s senior management, an official said.

Investigators also wanted to find out whether any bank official profited from the gang’s operations.

They said the gang had made a profit of more than Rs.60 lakh, chiefly by selling repossessed vehicles purchased from the bank, in the past one year alone. They said they would also investigate whether the gang had cheated the bank by denying opportunity for other buyers to participate in its auctions.

Court’s censure

The police said certain banks and financiers in the city were continuing to employ gangsters for repossessing vehicles from owners who defaulted on loan repayment, despite the Supreme Court deploring the crude practice in January 2007.

However, a significant number of people, who failed to repay vehicle and home-appliance loans in time continued to endure beatings, public insults and threats from musclemen on the payroll of banks.

Most suffered such hurt and humiliation in silence. The few who dared to make a police complaint got little assistance from the law-enforcers.

The investigation into the gang leader’s murder had also thrown light on the largely secret but mutually beneficial relationship between certain policemen and gangsters in the city.

The questioning of a key suspect in the murder case had revealed how gangs engaged by banks for repossessing vehicles had used certain corrupt policemen in the Cantonment and Museum police stations to their business advantage.

Method

Their method of operation was to give a written complaint to the police, rarely documented in station records, against the debtor.

The defaulter would be summoned to the police station and asked to either return his mortgaged vehicle to the bank’s agents or face prosecution.

Investigators said the commission for repossessing a relatively new vehicle with a Rs.6-lakh price tag was usually Rs.30,000.

The policemen would get a part of the commission, an official said. Investigators said they were also looking into the money lending operations of the gang.

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