Mumbai Crime: Man’s bank account cleaned out with stolen cheques

Representation pic. Pic/iStock

A Carpenter who returned to his hometown from Mumbai for his daughter's wedding, was shocked to find that his bank account had been cleaned out of Rs 4.5 lakh, and that too with withdrawals through his own cheques. He had taken the chequebook from the bank and noticed the sealed packet was open. When he had pointed this out, he had been told sometimes employees open the packets to check details. Sadly, he has had to cancel the wedding.

After Ramkesh Yadav, 48, gave a written complaint about the matter to the police in April, the Borivli police registered an FIR on Tuesday. Interestingly, the cheques used for withdrawal were from between the book. The accused even informed the bank that the complainant's phone was stolen, to prevent alerts from the bank from reaching him. No arrests have been made so far.

"I had to go to the village on April 7, so before that I applied for a fresh cheque book. But the cheque book was sent to the address of the house I had sold, and was returned to the bank as no one was there. I went to the bank along with my friend and got it," said Yadav. He noticed that the seal of the packet it was in was open. On inquiring, he was told that bank employees open the seal sometimes to check the name and address of the recipient.

"I did not suspect foul play as I trusted the bank. On reaching the village, when I went to withdraw some money for the wedding, I saw there was nothing in my account. Earlier, whenever I withdrew or deposited money, I used to get messages on my mobile immediately. But I did not get a single message on these withdrawals," he said.

When he called customer care of the bank, he was shocked to learn that someone had blocked his number saying the phone was lost. "When I sent relevant documents to the bank and told them that I had not informed any such thing, they restarted my phone alert service," said Yadav.

After the phone started, Yadav started getting messages and learnt that someone had withdrawn R4.5 lakh cash from his account in four transactions through cheques.

"I found there were four cheques missing in the cheque book. I had to cancel my daughter's wedding and return to Mumbai and register a complaint at the Borivli police station. I suspect this would not be possible without the involvement of a bank employee, so I have requested the police to investigate the bank, too," he said.

An officer from Borivli police station said, "During the investigation, we found one Chotelal Gupta and Mohammed Afzal had shown their identity details to withdraw the amount through the stolen cheques. We have registered a case of cheating and theft against them. We are finding out how they got the cheques and details of the victim to block his SIM card."