A peon at Indian Bank’s Ranjitsagar Road branch in Jamnagar has been booked alongside an accomplice for allegedly stealing mortgaged gold ornaments worth Rs 39.48 lakh from the bank vault and swapping them with counterfeit jewelry.
The peon stole the gold jewellery and replaced the original gold with fake gold.
The police received a tip that a man was trying to sell stolen gold. When the police investigated the matter, it was revealed that the gold was stolen from the bank. The police informed the branch manager about the stolen gold and an FIR was filed.
According to the FIR lodged by branch manager Hemraj Gajra (40), the incident occurred on August 27. Hasmukh Paria, a peon-cum-clerk residing at Pranami Township in Jamnagar, allegedly accessed the vault keys kept inside a drawer in the branch manager’s cabin.
He opened the safe and removed 342.1gm of gold ornaments deposited by four borrowers as collateral against loans. To evade immediate detection, he placed fake gold duplicates back into the packets inside the safe.
The stolen ornaments were subsequently handed over to his associate, Vijay Vaghora, who attempted to liquidate the assets.
The fraud was discovered when police personnel visited the branch with written information regarding Vaghora’s detention. Following the tip-off, bank branch authorities conducted an immediate physical verification of the gold packets with the branch’s certified jewelry appraiser.
The inspection confirmed that original gold belonging to four accounts had been substituted with fake gold.
