A Kolkata doctor attached to a hospital in Odisha was arrested in the city on Tuesday for allegedly procuring a personal loan of Rs 50 lakh from a private bank by using the PAN card of a namesake, police said.
The incident, officers said, was part of a large racket being investigated by the police. School teachers, a bank official and a central government employee were earlier arrested for similar crime.
“All these arrested persons had defaulted on loans and were not eligible for any fresh loan. They used PAN cards of people whose names matched theirs and who had better banking records to get fresh loans,” said a senior officer at Lalbazar.
The police said they approached the bank for a personal loan and submitted all genuine documents except the PAN card. “All of them took the help of a middleman who had apparently provided each of them with photocopies of a PAN card of a namesake,” the officer said.
The police said Debraj Chanda, 44, the doctor, was the fifth to be arrested in connection with the case.
Chanda was attached to a hospital in Park Circus in 2021 when he had taken a loan of Rs 50 lakh from the complainant bank allegedly using someone else’s PAN card.
“The bank realised the fraud when the actual owner of the PAN card approached them and said he had not taken any loan from the bank. The bank ran an internal investigation and found the PAN card whose photocopy Chanda submitted was not his,” the officer said.
Chanda, the police said, later shifted to a hospital in Odisha’s Bolangir.
The doctor and at least four others had allegedly cheated the bank by taking personal loans totalling Rs 2.12 crore by submitting copies of PAN cards of other people. Among the accused, Chanda allegedly took the largest amount as loan.
“Earlier, four persons were arrested in this case. All are in judicial custody,” said an officer in the bank fraud section of the detective department of Kolkata police.
Chanda, who owns an apartment in Nayabad in Panchasayar on the city’s southeastern fringes, was arrested on Tuesday afternoon. The police suspect several others were involved in the racket.
“It is extremely important to keep your personal documents secured to prevent their misuse,” a senior police officer said.
Ramakrishna Mission opens cyclone relief shelter
A cyclone relief centre that will double as a “non-formal education” hub was opened at Hingalganj in North 24-Parganas district on Saturday. The two-storeyed building, spanning 2,200 sq ft, has been funded by Ramakrishna Mission.
The centre is part of a rehabilitation project in Hingalganj, near the Bangladesh border, one of the several coastal pockets in South and North 24-Parganas that were ravaged by Cyclone Amphan in May 2020.
“Apart from being a cyclone shelter, the centre will also be used to impart vocational training to the local youth,” said a representative of Ramakrishna Mission. The centre, named Ma Sarada Multipurpose Relief Shelter-cumNon Formal Education Centre, was inaugurated by Swami Tattwavidananda, assistant general secretary, Ramakrishna Math and Ramakrishna Mission, Belur Math, and Swami Sarvalokananda, secretary, Ramakrishna Mission Ashrama, Narendrapur.