Fake gold mortgaged with bank for 92L loan

Varanasi: On complaint of the branch manager of Union Bank of India, Kajgaon Line Bazar police in Jaunpur lodged an FIR against nine, including a gold appraiser and loan seekers, for taking loans worth over Rs 92.24 lakh by depositing fake gold as collateral.
On being contacted on Wednesday, inspector Line Bazar Sanjay Verma said, “We received a complaint from the UBI branch manager on June 5 and lodged an FIR under section 420 (cheating), 406 (criminal breach of trust) and 120B (criminal conspiracy) of IPC against gold appraiser Manish Kumar Seth, loan seekers Tarun Rajmani, Shweta Singh, Manoj Gopal, Vikrant Singh, Shashank Kumar Srivastava, Ajay Soni, Anup Kumar Singh and one unidentified. During probe, it came to light that loan had been repaid by the loan seekers by February, said Verma, adding that role of bank officials is being probed to know why they caused delay in complaining to the police.
The branch manager said among gold loans sanctioned by the branch between August 17, 2022 and December 8, 2022, there were 19 cases in which fake gold had been mortgaged by loan seekers. They had formed a nexus with the bank’s gold appraiser Manish Kumar Seth of Mohalla Rizvi Khan area to get the loan sanctioned.
Bank officials said the incident came to light when they engaged another gold appraiser on January 20 to check the gold mortgaged against the loan amount. Bank officials said they had lodged a complaint with the Jafrabad police station on February 4 but no action was taken against Seth or others involved. TNN