The Cuddalore police in Tamil Nadu registered a case of forgery against three people for possessing an entire paraphernalia of objects found in a typical State Bank of India (SBI) branch: pay-in slips, transaction applications, vouchers, stamps, counting machines and so on.
A case was filed against Kamal Babu and his two accomplices under Section 484 of the India Penal Code (IPC) for counterfeiting the mark used by a public official as well as forgery. The counterfeit objects were seized and Babu was produced before a district magistrate in Cuddalore. He was later released on bail.
Police sources said the accused forged documents under the fake branch 'SBI North Bazaar'. However, the "branch" had no billboards and was operated out of a room in the man's house and no customers were cheated.
"It was not really a scam, in the sense that no one was cheated. He did not run a branch, meaning there was no billboard, no retail space, no cashiers. Just reams of slips and official-looking stamps, etc," said a senior police officer aware of the case proceedings.
Police sources said Babu was handling the accounts of his mother and her elder sister, committing funds to multiple Recurring Deposits and so on. He was running online transactions as well, but he was not defrauding public customers of SBI.
Babu's aunt brought the fake pay-in slips to the notice of a bank representative, who escalated the matter.
"I wouldn't call it a branch. It was a room inside his house. The place had a cash-counting machine, pay-in slips, passbooks, and so on. The SBI officials who came to know about this wanted a case filed." said a police officer aware of the details of the case.
(With inputs from Premanand)
Comments
0 comment