Raipur: The Economic Offences Wing and Anti-Corruption Bureau (EOW-ACB) has filed a chargesheet in a special court in Bilaspur on Friday against a former Bank of Baroda branch manager and a private associate. The two are accused of defrauding the bank of more than ₹5.04 crore through loans sanctioned to fake firms.
The accused are Rahul Kumar Sinha (45) and Biswajeet Bhowmick (56), a resident of Mopka in Bilaspur. Sinha was a senior branch manager at the bank’s Rajkishore Nagar branch in Bilaspur at the time. He is now posted as a senior manager at the Gadhsisa branch in Kutch district, Gujarat.
The case (Crime No. 04/2020) was registered on January 28, 2020, on a complaint from the bank’s regional office in Raipur. The chargesheet invokes Sections 420 (cheating), 467 (forgery), 468 (forgery for the purpose of cheating), 471 (using a forged document as genuine) and 120-B (criminal conspiracy) of the Indian Penal Code, along with Sections 12 and 13(2) of the Prevention of Corruption Act, 1988.
How the scheme allegedly worked
According to the investigation, Bhowmick ran Udaan Micro Finance at Jarhabhatha in Bilaspur and helped people obtain small loans. In the process, he collected identity documents, property papers, signed blank cheques and bank forms from applicants.
He allegedly used these documents, without the applicants’ knowledge, to set up 11 fake firms. For some of them he named his own employees as proprietors, and for three he forged shop registration certificates.
Between March 20, 2018 and May 3, 2019, Sinha allegedly disregarded banking norms and sanctioned cash credit, overdraft, bank guarantee and term loan facilities to all 11 ineligible entities. He is accused of accepting mortgaged properties belonging to unrelated third parties and submitting false inspection reports that vouched for commercial units that did not exist. The address of one firm was the same as Bhowmick’s home.
Where the money went
Investigators say the sanctioned funds were moved through several accounts and finally reached Bhowmick’s own firm, A.B. Fasteners, through the National Small Industries Corporation (NSIC), using forged invoices. All 11 loan accounts became non-performing assets (NPAs) in 2019, leaving the bank with a total loss of ₹5,04,15,000.
