Three men who had allegedly been running a ‘fake SBI’ branch in Panruti were arrested on Saturday. One of them was Kamal Babu, the son of a retired female bank employee, whose father had died ten years ago.
The police said that these men had been running a duplicate SBI branch in the Panruti Bazaar area, using stolen computers, forged documents, challans, and lockers, amongst other things. They had even created a fake website for the branch. This branch had been operated by Babu, along with A Kumar (42), M Manickam (52), since the lockdown had started, assuming that they wouldn’t get caught.
This came under the radar of the police when an SBI customer had inquired about the newly opened branch to the Branch Manager. This customer had acquired a receipt from the fake branch, which they then showed to the Branch Manager, prompting him to lodge a complaint with the local police.
Following this, the police visited the duplicate branch along with bank officials and were shocked to find the setup to be exactly like the original. Speaking about this, a police official from the Panruti branch said, “Till date, we haven’t received any complaints from customers that they have lost money in this branch. When we enquired, Babu said he never intended to cheat people but wanted to open a bank for himself. However, there has been a lot of transactions between his mother’s account and his aunt’s account. A probe is underway.” An FIR was filed under sections 473, 469, 484, 109 of the Indian Penal Code.
(Source: Business Standard, Indian Express)