PMCB depositor dies after protest

Mumbai, Oct. 15: A 51year-old man, whose family has a deposit of over `90 lakh with the troubled Punjab and Maharashtra Bank Cooperative (PMC) Bank, died due to a heart attack, sources said on Tuesday.

Sanjay Gulati, a resident of suburban Oshiwara, went to a protest march held outside a city court on Monday morning. He had been under stress because of his deposit being stuck, said Manali Narkar, who was among the agitating depositors.

Gulati was there at the protest along with his 80year-old father, Narkar said.

Gulati died due to a heart attack while having dinner on Monday, a senior official at Oshiwara police station said. —

Hours after protesting the Punjab and Maharashtra Cooperative (PMC) bank scam, a 51-year-old customer with deposits worth `90 lakh died of a heart attack in Mumbai. The deceased was identified as Sanjay Gulati, who used to work with Jet Airways before he lost his job after the airline was grounded in April.

Gulati participated in the protest along with his father on Monday and returned home. The family was having a late lunch when Gulati collapsed and turned motionless. The family rushed him to a nearby hospital where he was declared dead on arrival and the cause of death was detected as cardiac arrest.

Gulati’s family said that he was under tremendous pressure ever since the PMC Bank went belly up and was struggling to manage things with the constraints put on customers. The family told the media, “We are struggling to pay the tuition fees of the Gulatis’ differently-abled son who needs special education and medical attention, entailing high expenditure.”

The family had savings to the tune of `90 lakh in the bank, including a recurring deposit account started for the Gulatis’ son.

Incidentally, the day Gulati died was also the day when depositors got a breather in the form of the withdrawal limit being raised to `40,000.

Real estate firm HDIL allegedly accounted for 70 per cent of the bank’s `9,000 crore advances. The Economic Offences Wing’s probe revealed that PMC bank officials colluded with Housing Development and Infrastructure Limited (HDIL) and kept granting them loans despite the past loans going bad. The EOW arrested four persons, including HDIL promoters and former top officials of the bank.

An accidental death report has been registered.