Case registered in BSNL cooperative society fraud

Thiruvananthapuram: Vanchiyoor police have registered a case against the administrative panel members of the BSNL engineers cooperative society over fund misappropriation worth crores of rupees.
The irregularities came out when the depositors were denied the fund by the society when they tried to withdraw their money. In the inquiry conducted by the cooperative department, a fraud worth Rs 44 crore was reported, and the cooperative registrar sent a request to the city police commissioner demanding a probe after registering a case. The registrar had also sent a copy of the inquiry report to the commissioner.
The city police commissioner directed Vanchiyoor police to register a case and the case was registered under IPC sections 409 for criminal breach of trust and 420 for cheating.
“Loans were taken in the name of depositors by forging documents and using fake signatures. There were mismatches also in the total amount of deposits on record. Arrests can be made only after collecting all the evidence,” said the police.
Nearly 250 people, who have deposited money at the society’s branch at Statue on Uppalam Road, complained that they were denied money when they went to withdraw money. The depositors also said that they have not received interest for their deposits for the last couple of months. Most of the depositors at the society are retired employees of BSNL. Most of them deposited the retirement benefits at the society eying an attractive interest rate.
“I had deposited Rs 35 lakhs at the society, when I retired in 2015. Now when I tried to withdraw the deposit for the marriage of my daughter, they rejected my request citing shortage of funds,” said Gopinathan AG, a retired employee of BSNL.
The depositors have formed a collective and filed a complaint earlier at the registrar and assistant registrar of cooperative societies. In the meantime, the tenure of the administrative panel came to an end and an ad-hoc committee took over the charge.