The Hoskote police have registered a cheating case against six persons who allegedly availed themselves of gold loan worth ₹ 17.8 lakh from State Bank of India (SBI) three years ago by pledging fake gold.
The fraud came to light on April 29 when Malathi S. from the SBI's Hoskote branch found out the accused had defaulted n the loan and started the recovery process .
In her complaint, Ms. Malathi said that she had sent notice to the accused to remind them about the repayment and also sent the gold for evaluation to prepare for auctioning. To her shock, the gold turned out to be fake and the defaulters were not available at the address given.
The complainant said that the accused, identified as Nagaraja, had pledged 346 grams of gold to get ₹6.68 lakh loan; Nataraja H.S. had got ₹4.49 lakh loan against 237 grams of gold; Manjunatha received ₹4.7 lakh against 244 grams of gold; Hanumantha Pawar pledged 79 grams of gold to get ₹1.5 lakh loan; Murthy K.N. received ₹1.7 lakh loan against 80 grams of gold; and Babajan pledged 24 grams of gold to get ₹46,000 in March 2018 .
Ms. Malathi also submitted a list of bank employees who were responsible for verifying the loan requests and sanctioning the loan amount.
The police suspect the officials’ involvement in the fraud and said that they have not followed the due procedure while sanctioning the loan.
The extent of the bank officials’ involvement will be ascertained only after the accused are arrested, a police officer, said.
