Times of India Mumbai; Date:2007 Sep 25; Section:*Front Page*; Page Number 1 *Bank manager flees with Rs 1.75 cr*
TIMES NEWS NETWORK Patna: A bank manager is someone you'd trust with all your wealth and assets. But not Suresh Balodia. The *ICICI Bank*'s Patna branch head made off with Rs 1 crore deposited in the bank by a Bihar government undertaking. Investigations showed he had also duped another bank customer of Rs 75 lakh. Quoting from an FIR lodged by the bank, police sources said the Bihar State Beverage Corporation Ltd deposited Rs 1 crore through two cheques of Rs 50 lakh each in the bank on July 16. When corporation officials came to the bank on September 14 to withdraw the money, they found that the amount had never been credited into the corporation's account. A probe revealed that the amount was instead transferred to the account of one Vikas Chandra Rai, director of a Delhi-based firm, with the bank's branch manager, Balodia, allegedly playing a role in the illegal transaction. ICICI Bank's regional manager S Mukherji lodged an FIR against Balodia on September 20. The accused had by then disappeared. An ICICI Bank spokesperson in a statement said, "Our preliminary probe found veracity in the claims of the clients. Suresh Balodia has been placed under suspension. A police complaint has been lodged and we are cooperating in the probe.'' ICICI Bank has assured BSBCL that it will pay back the money with interest. He said the bank had also agreed to pay interest to BSBCL on another Rs 1 crore which was not deposited in its term-deposit account as requested by it and was instead deposited in a "suspense account''. * City ATM heist an inside job? *Was Sunday's Rs 21 lakh ATM heist in Kandivli an inside job? The police certainly think so given the technical aspects of the robbery--a key was needed to open the back of the automated teller machine and a secret six-digit code had to be punched in to unlock the panel containing cash. Nearly 20 people, some of them employees of the agency to whom the cash loading was outsourced, have been questioned. P 2 * 'An officer and a gentleman' * Patna: Even as ICICI Bank has assured the government agency BSBCL that it will reimburse the 'missing' money in its account, the Bihar police isn't quite sure what to do. "If needed, police teams will be sent to Suresh Balodia's native place in West Bengal to arrest him and also to Delhi to track down Rai,'' said Patna SSP Kundan Krishnan. "Balodia saheb was like any other normal person,'' said Shiv Bachan, guard at the Vidya Alankar apartments on Boring Road in Patna where the bank manager lived in flat number 403 until a few days ago. The banker, along with his wife and two children, had shifted to the building six months ago and neighbours recalled he was a "thorough gentleman''. "Saheb used to go to office by rickshaw,'' the guard added. Balodia and his family members left the place around ten days ago, and no one in the neighbourhood knows where they went. Balodia's colleagues refused to talk to TOI. They did not even give out the telephone numbers of their senior officials, and claimed that they did not have them. --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Green Youth Movement" group. To post to this group, send email to [email protected] To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/greenyouth?hl=en-GB -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
