Bank manager cheats customers of 33 lakh with fake FD offer, FIR registered but no trace of him

Gurgaon: The manager of Emirates NBD bank was booked for allegedly collecting Rs 33 lakh from clients by showing them a forged email offering high interest on fixed deposits. Suresh Chand Sharma, who joined the bank in 2022, was suspended by the authorities in Aug and has been untraceable. He lived in Laxmi Nagar with his wife, who lodged a missing person's complaint at Shakarpur police station in Delhi on Aug 30.
The fraud came to light after bank officials noticed a suspicious transaction of Rs 5 lakh on Aug 22.A bank customer, Naresh, sent this amount to Sharma's personal account.
"When we contacted Naresh, he told us that he transferred the money as Sharma told him to do so to create an FD at a higher interest. The remittance form that Naresh filled indicated that the amount had to be transferred to the ENBD suspense account, but it was remitted to Sharma's account. It seems an impression was created in the customer's mind by Sharma that the account number belonged to the bank," the bank's representative, chief compliance officer Royston D'Sliva alleged in his police complaint.
After an inquiry, the bank authorities suspended Sharma on and asked him to hand over his official computer and other accessories by Aug 27.
"We also blocked his access to the bank and other systems. We checked his computer and found he forged a document showing that an email was sent to him by the highest executives of the bank, indicating that the fixed deposit rate for the staff was revised to 8.95% per annum, which is not true. We got the impression that he showed this forged email to cheat customers." said Royston.
Sharma's bank statement revealed more suspicious transactions. Between Jan 24 and Aug 23 this year, five people sent a total of Rs 33 lakh into his bank account and Sharma transferred it to three of his accounts in other banks, Royston added.
On Aug 30, Sharma sent a message to several colleagues saying he was mentally unwell due to personal problems. According to the FIR, he wrote in the message that he would have to "end" his life as "official things also went wrong".
After Royston's complaint, DLF Phase 2 police registered a case on Wednesday against Sharma under sections 316 (5) (criminal breach of trust by public servant, or by banker, merchant or agent), 318 (4) (cheating and dishonestly inducing delivery of property) of the BNS.
"Sharma has been missing since Aug 30 and his phone is off. On his wife's complaint, a missing case was registered in Shakarpur. We will conduct a thorough investigation and gather all the details," DLF Phase 2 SI Naveen Yadav said.