Raghbir Singh Brar
Faridkot
“The accused had withdrawn crores of Rs from the account holders, which is by now Rs 14 crore, but the amount could be multiplied ten times as per the allegation of the 186 account holders,” said SSP Pragya Jain.
“We had immediately got the LOC notices issued against the accused and his wife,” the said SSP.
Faridkot police on Thursday claimed to have arrested a bank clerk from Mathura in Uttar Pradesh.
Amit Dhigra, a clerk with the State Bank of India, branch Sadak of the town had given a rude shock to the hundreds of the account holders when it was found that he had withdrawn the crores of rupees from the bank accounts of the farmers etc.
He had allegedly encashed FDs and agriculture limits cheating the holders and even had allegedly stopped their SMSs so that the theft could not be detected.
“We had received the information on July 21 that the accused had embezzled money from the accounts of a large number of bank holders.The police had immediately registered a case against Amit Dhingra at police station Sadak on the complaint of Sushank Sekhar Arora,deputy manager in the branch, “said Pragya Jain,SSP Faridkot addressing the media here today.
“On further investigation,we learnt that transactions to the tune of Rs 2.30 crore had taken place in the account of his wife Rupinder Kaur in the past. So we had also nominated Rupinder Kaur as a co-accused and a LOC was issued against both the accused,” the SSP said.
“Rupinder kaur was arrested by the police the same when she was about to leave the country.On further investigation, the police learnt that the accused had also some accomodation at Faridkot town from where the police got some leads. Some electronic devices were found from this place during the police raid,” the SSP said.
“The police had received about 186 complaints in this regard. We had collected some information from the back officials and it was leant that he had allegedly embezzled about 14 crore from the accounts of the account holders. But actually, it could be ten times more as per the allegation of the complainants, which would be now investigated,” the SSP said.
The accused had been working at the same branch for the past 15 years and had allegedly won the trust of the account holders.
He allegedly dealt with the agriculture loans and FDs.
“The police teams being supervised by SP (investigation), Sandeep Kumar, on the directions of DSP (SD) Faridkot Tarlochan Singh had been working over time to nab the accused.After some leads, the police found him to be at Mathura,in UP,where he had reached three days ago and had to flee at about 7 am Thursday. So a police party led by inspector Navdeep Singh,SHO Sadak, travelled overnight to nab him from Mathura before he could leave.The Mathura police also helped Faridkot police very professionally,” said Pragya Jan,SSP Faridkot.
“Now he is to be presented before the court and his long time remand would be sought so that we can investigate each detail of the account holder’s money so that the money,embezzled by the accused could be returned to the victims,” said Pragya Jain,SSP Faridkot.
Many people who had been cheated by the accused thanked the SSP for the very swift action of the police.
The cheated account holders on Thursday met the SSP appreciating the police action against the accused and thanked the Faridkot police.
