A businesswoman from Dadar received an SMS from HDFC Bank on Wednesday evening, informing her that over Rs 47,000 had been debited from her current account through cheque. Unlike other text messages from her bank, this bewildered her, as she had not issued any cheque. Hutoxi Panthaki checked her chequebook and found all the leaves intact.

She suspect that someone not only cloned her cheque, but also forged her signature. “I rushed to the bank the next day. The staff there initially insisted that I must have issued the cheque in the name of Mithon Kumar. The bank staff was convinced only after I showed them the blank leaves of my chequebook,” she told mid-day.