Rs 65 lakh bank fraud bared in Adilabad

Two staffers of Indian Bank were booked for siphoning Rs 65 lakh by mortgaging fake gold in the bank. 

The incident came to light in Mancherial town after Sumit Kumar, who was  posted as new manager of Indian Bank, lodged a  complaint with the police on January 22.

In his complaint, the branch manager stated that the amount was embezzled by mortgaging fake gold in the last three years and suspected that the involvement of retired Assistant manager of the bank Ellaiah and appraiser Thangallapalli Shravan, who values the gold on behalf of the bank.

The bank manager found this anomaly on the observing that all the customers who had taken gold loans remained defaulters. They neither paid installments nor the principal amount even after taking gold loans.

Recently, the bank staff decided to auction of the 350 packets of mortgaged gold and tried to get the value evaluate the value by another appraiser as the regular appraiser Thangallapalli Shravan was not available.

Mancherial CI Sudhakar said they booked cases against retired bank Assist manger Ellaiah, appraiser Thangallapalli Shravan and bank customers who had taken loans by mortgaging fake gold Brahmananda Chari, Pusala Shyamsunder, Pusala Rajesh and Narsingoju Satish.

It is said that retired bank Assist manager Ellaiah and appraiser Shravan siphoned off Rs 65, 33, 917 in the name of 43 bank customers by recruiting four customers as middlemen.

Investigation is on to find out how many customers secured bank loans by mortgaging fake gold and whether they did it in collusion with the bank staff. Police are also probing why the previous bank manager neglected the recovery of the loans. 

Dry spell ends, farmers cheer rains

Banks to give only 50 pc amount as fresh crop loans: Drought

The banks would give only 50 percent amount as fresh crop loan to the farmers after rescheduling their loans, following the payment of the 25 percent crop loan waiver to the tune of Rs 4,250 crores to the banks in first phase by the state government.

According to Agriculture officials, district officials have identified 3,15,015 farmers  eligible for the crop loan waiver and the amount comes to the tune of the Rs 1510.91 crores in the district.

However, the state government has released Rs 377.73 crore, that comes to 20 percent in the total crop loan waiver to the 32 banks in the district and the remaining 75 percent amount of crop loan waiver will be paid to the farmers with interest in three phases. 

The state government has asked the farmers to take fresh loans from the banks.

The state government has formed the redressal committees at mandal level with Tahasildar as its chairman, respective bank mangers and MPDO as members to look into the complaint if any, in the selection of farmers for crop loan waiver.

Joint Director of Agriculture (JDA) S. Rose Leela said the fresh loan amount would be based on scale of finance and the remaining amount after deducting 25 percent from the crop loan arrears up to Rs 1 lakh.

It is not clear whether the banks will give only 50 percent of amount of fresh crop loans even for Rabi season as state government has not paid the crop loan waiver up to Rs 1 lakh by the state government.

It is noticed that the crop loan waiver announced by the state government has become more useful for small and marginal farmers as most of these farmers as most of farmers had taken loan bellow Rs 1 lakh.

But big farmers had taken crop loans from various banks the amount goes beyond Rs 1 lakh. The delay in waiver of crop loan had hit the farmers for the last few months after the TRS was voted to power.