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DEHRADUN: Fraudsters siphoned off Rs 68.39 lakh from the bank account of Uttarakhand Purv Sainik Kalyan Nigam Limited by clearing 14 forged cheques. The Dehradun police have registered a criminal case against four bank account holders on charges of fraud, cheating, and forgery following a formal complaint by Punjab National Bank. The incident came to light after the public sector undertaking discovered the unauthorized transactions, even while the original chequebook issued to the corporation in 2019 remained safely in its physical possession.
Cloned Cheques Cleared Through PNB Current Account
According to City Kotwali police in charge K.C. Bhatt, the complaint was lodged by Manish Sharma, the manager of the PNB branch situated on the Survey of India campus in Hathibadkala. UPNAL holds an active current account with this branch. On June 18, UPNAL sent an official letter to the bank management informing them that an aggregate sum of Rs 68,39,500 had been cleared through 14 separate cheques on June 17.
An internal banking inquiry revealed that criminals had cloned the cheques to bypass clearing verifications between June 17 and June 18. The diverted funds were distributed across multiple beneficiary accounts in separate commercial banks. These included the account of M/s Agro Enterprises in Canara Bank, Supriyo Mukherjee in Bank of Baroda, Subhajit Mandal in Bank of India, and Saurabh Biswas in State Bank of India. Police have booked all four named account holders, and sub-inspector Kamal Singh Rawat has been assigned to lead the investigation.
Bank Alert Foils Second Fraud Attempt of Rs 24 Lakh
Following the initial withdrawal, the perpetrators made a second bid to extract funds on June 18. Five cloned cheques bearing numbers from the same cheque series were placed into the clearing system to withdraw an additional Rs 24,43,700. PNB officials detected the suspicious transactions and stopped the payments before the transactions could be cleared.
Prompt communication from PNB enabled recipient institutions to take defensive measures. Alerted by PNB, Canara Bank acted swiftly to freeze the operational account belonging to M/s Agro Enterprises, successfully holding an unwithdrawn sum of Rs 16,54,581 to recover part of the targeted funds. Investigators are currently scrutinizing the fraudulent paper trail to determine how sensitive cheque details were compromised.
Questions Mount Over Banking Security and Verification Protocols
The case highlights significant vulnerabilities surrounding cheque cloning and the integrity of automated clearing protocols. With the genuine chequebook remaining inside UPNAL custody since 2019, the unauthorized duplication underscores gaps in physical and digital verification at initial clearing stages. Police authorities are tracing the monetary trail and investigating the intermediaries involved in manufacturing the counterfeit instruments.
