Bank pays Rs 15 lakh to dead customer’s wife

ICICI agreed to pay Rs 15.50 lakh as compensation after seeing the suicide note written by the dead Mumbai resident, report Megha Sood & Debasish Panigrahi.

After being threatened and harrassed by recovery agents of ICICI Bank for not being able to pay the instalments on his Rs 50,000 loan, Prakash Sarvankar, a resident of Andheri (East) hanged himself 10 days ago. On Thursday, the bank agreed to pay his wife Priyanka Rs 15.50 lakh as compensation.

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Prakash had written a suicide note, blaming the recovery agents for his death. He had been jobless for the last six months.

On Thursday, Priyanka received a letter from the bank stating that she would get a fixed deposit of Rs 10 lakh at 9.5 per cent interest for 59 months. There was also a Rs 25 lakh life insurance policy as well as a Rs 4 lakh medical cover for Priyanka. Her daughters got Rs 3 lakh each as medical cover.

An ICICI official said, “This is a gesture on our part to the deceased’s family. Investigations will reveal where the lapse was.”