An assistant manager at SBI’s Retail Assets and Small and Medium Enterprises City Credit Cell (RASMECCC) was arrested on Sunday for allegedly misappropriating Rs 34.10 lakh paid by 137 customers towards insurance premium for education loans. His motivation? Police said he was trying to make up for the Rs 15 lakh he’d lost playing online rummy.
According to the district crime branch (DCB) of Vellore police, 38-year-old M Yogeshwara Pandian, a native of Virudhunagar district, was working at the RASMECCC branch in Gandhi Nagar, Katpadi from July 2018. He had allegedly been siphoning funds paid by customers towards the insurance premium of education loans. After a complaint was raised about the missing premium amount, the bank placed Pandian on suspension in April 2022 and opened an inquiry. It was found Pandian had misappropriated `34,10,622 lakh of 137 customers, said DCB sources.
DCB sources said Pandian had forged documents and transferred the misappropriated funds to his personal accounts in Canara Bank and Bank of Baroda. “He spent his monthly salary gambling online and lost over Rs 15 lakh. In his hometown, his family survived on the earnings of his wife, who was a government school teacher. To compensate for the losses, Pandian misappropriated the funds. But he continued playing gambling with the money earned fraudulently, and lost everything,” said DCB sources.
Based on a police complaint lodged by Sivakumar, the branch manager of the Retail Assets Small & Medium Enterprises City Credit Cell (RASMECCC), on March 14 the District Crime Branch booked Pandian under Sections 465 (forgery), 467 (forgery of valuable security, will, etc.), 468 (forgery for purpose of cheating), 471 (fraudulently or dishonestly uses forged document as genuine), 477A (falsification of accounts), 409 (criminal breach of trust by public servant, banker, merchant, or agent), and 420 (cheating or dishonestly inducing delivery of property) of the IPC.