Bank manager among 9 booked for duping 90-yr-old man of ₹5 cr

KARNAL: The Karnal police on Sunday booked nine people, including a branch manager of Indian Bank, his wife and a chartered account, for allegedly duping 90-year-old Harbhajan Singh Rana of ₹5 crore.

The accused are Santosh Yadav, her husband Satpal Yadav, Harbhajan’s neighbour Pawandeep Singh, his mother Harpreet Kaur, sister Simaranpreet Kaur, CA Manisha Kumar and her mother Shanti Devi, besides a bank manager and his wife.

As per Harbhajan’s daughter Ravinder Karas, the accused had allegedly transferred ₹5 crore from her father’s accounts with the help of bank officials and also became nominee in his bank accounts besides opening joint accounts with him.

The matter came to light in November 2016, when Harbhajan — who had returned from London after serving as an electrical engineer for 40 years and was living in his Sector-7 residence — fell ill and Ravinder decided to take him along with her to London.

When she went to bank to withdraw money from his bank accounts, she found that a group of people, including his father’s neighbours, CA and bank officials, had withdrawn around ₹5 crore from his bank accounts and were even listed as nominees in his FD receipts.

Ravinder has alleged that police did not file any case when she had first flagged the issue.

She had then approached the Punjab and Haryana High Court and the court in its August 2017 order, observed that the accused, who were claiming themselves as Harbhajan’s nominees, would have right on his money after his death and even if they were Harbhajan’s relatives, why were they not allowing his daughter to withdraw his money for his treatment.

Harbhajan died in London in March this year. Ravinder then approached the Karnal SP and submitted a complaint alleging that Santosh and her husband used to come to Harbhajan’s house and started gathering information about him. She claimed that with the help of CA Manisha, who had all the details of Harbhajan’s bank accounts, they stole all bank-related documents, ID proofs, insurance policies, passbooks, keys of the cars and passport of her father.

‘HAD 75 FDS OF ₹16 CR’

Talking to Hindustan Times, Harbhajan’s cousin Gurdeep Singh said his brother had 75 fixed deposits of ₹16.75 crore in 17 banks and the accused withdrew around ₹5 crore by using forged documents and opening fake joint bank accounts with Harbhajan. Gurdeep alleged they had also filed a complaint with the police on March 16 at the Civil Lines police station, but the FIR was not registered. “I then met the IGP (Karnal range), Navdeep Singh Virk, and he asked me to file a fresh complaint and an FIR was registered,” he added. Karnal SP Surender Bhoria confirmed that case has been registered. “We will investigate the case from all angles,” he added.