Jammu, Feb 18: The Jammu and Kashmir Police’s crime branch has apprehended five individuals, including a former manager of the Jammu and Kashmir Bank, in connection with a suspected multi-crore loan scam, as stated by the agency on Tuesday.
The investigation was initiated in 2023 following a complaint lodged by Mohammad Shakeel, the chief manager overseeing the bank’s supervision and control division in Jammu.
Shakeel alleged that Saleem Yousuf Bhatti, a contractual worker associated with the Integrated Watershed Management Programme (IWMP) in Poonch, and others managed to reactivate inactive accounts of the watershed committee at the Lassana branch in Surankote.
The suspects are accused of altering account names, fabricating salary certificates, and issuing false confirmation letters for nonexistent employees to fraudulently acquire personal loans, cash credit loans, and car loans by misrepresenting themselves as government workers, according to a crime branch spokesperson.
Additionally, the accused allegedly succeeded in opening counterfeit government accounts at Mendhar and Mendhar Bus Stand branch offices of the bank.
They first deposited funds into the watershed committee’s accounts and their own fraudulent accounts through various banks, subsequently issuing fake authority letters directing the branches to distribute and credit salaries into their individual accounts. This operation allowed them to illegally obtain loans exceeding Rs 5 crore from multiple Jammu and Kashmir Bank branches, resulting in significant financial losses to the institution.
As part of the ongoing investigation, the crime branch has arrested five suspects, including Jatinder Singh, the then manager (scale-II) of the bank’s Rajouri branch (now demoted), along with impersonators Mohammad Kabir, Mohammad Zafeer Khan, and Zafar Iqbal from Poonch, as well as Mohammad Shakeel from Rajouri, the spokesperson confirmed.
