E-Paper
Crime branch produces preliminary charge-sheet against accused
The prime accused was identified as Saleem Yousaf Bhatti, son of Mohammad Yousaf of Narol in Mendhar tehsil of Poonch
The crime branch, on Saturday, produced a preliminary charge-sheet against four accused for their involvement in hatching a criminal conspiracy and swindling ₹5 crores from different branches of J&K Bank as loans of different nature on the pretext of a government scheme under the integrated water management programme (IWMP) meant for Poonch district.
The prime accused was identified as Saleem Yousaf Bhatti, son of Mohammad Yousaf of Narol in Mendhar tehsil of Poonch.
“A 496-page chargesheet was produced before a court of law against the four accused booked and arrested in FIR number 86/2023 under Sections 419, 420, 465, 467, 468, 471, 120-B of the Indian Penal Code,” said an official spokesperson.
The prime accused and mastermind Saleem Yousaf Bhatti, who was previously working as a contractual employee in the IWMP, a central government-sponsored scheme executed his nefarious designs by misusing his position and misrepresentation of facts, said the spokesperson. Other co-accused arrested in the case were identified as Mohammad Altaf of Ari in Mendhar , his wife Ruksana Tabassum and Zahida Parveen, daughter of Mohammad Ikhlaq, also of Ari in Mendhar.
The fraud was detected after a complaint lodged by the chief manager at the zonal office of J&K Bank at Jammu alleged that Saleem Yousaf Bhatti and others had illegally activated inactive accounts of the watershed committee at J&K Bank’s Lassana branch in Surankote.
“Subsequently, the accused changed the nomenclature of the accounts, fabricated fake salary certificates and confirmation letters to different non-existing employees and managed personal loans, cash credit loans and car loans running into crores of rupees by posing themselves as government employees,” said the spokesperson.
The accused also managed to open fraudulent government accounts in J&K Bank’s Mendhar branch at the bus stand.
“Accused firstly deposited money through different banks in the accounts of water shed committee and the fake accounts opened by them, issued fake authority letters instructing the branches to disburse and credit the salaries in individual accounts, which were later projected as government employees and thus they managed to obtain loan from different branches of the J&K Bank thereby causing wrongful loss to the tune of ₹5 crores,” said the spokesperson.
On receipt of the complaint, a preliminary verification was initiated and during the probe the allegations were prima facie substantiated, leading to the registration of a formal case for in-depth investigation.
During the investigation relevant record was seized, statements of witnesses were recorded, scientific, circumstantial and other material evidence was collected and offences under Sections 419 (punishment for cheating by personation), 420 (cheating and dishonestly inducing delivery of property), 465 (punishment for forgery), 467 (forgery of valuable security, will, etc), 468 (forgery for purpose of cheating), 471 (using as genuine a forged 1[document or electronic record].) and 120-B (criminal conspiracy) of the Indian Penal Code were established against the prime accused Bhatti, who in connivance with other co-accused swindled the public money,” said the spokesperson.
All these loans are now non-performing assets (NPA) of the J&K Bank.
Investigation in the case is in progress to identify and arrest other accused involved in the crime, he added.
