West Bengal: Bank manager arrested for stealing coins worth Rs 84 lakh to buy lottery tickets from branch

In a bizarre incident, a bank manager at the State Bank of India (SBI) stole lakhs of coins to buy lottery tickets. The 35-year-old senior assistant manager at the bank’s branch in Memari near Kolkata in West Bengal’s East Burdwan district had worked in the bank for over eight years. Identified as Tarak Jaiswal, the senior employee stole as many as 8,40,000 coins of Rs 10 denomination in the span of 17 months that he worked in the branch. On an average, he siphoned off close to 50,000 coins every month, or 2,000 coins every day. His wrongdoing was caught in the annual audit on November 27 and he was arrested on Friday. On Saturday, a local court sent him to police custody for five days.

“Jaiswal confessed to his crime and claimed that he spent the entire money on lottery tickets. We are trying to find out if he had an accomplice,” Bhaskar Mukherjee, superintendent of police, East Burdwan district, said as quoted by the Hindustan Times. Tarun Kumar Saha, regional manager of the bank, lodged a complaint at Memari police station. “We filed a complaint when we found a huge amount of coins missing,” Saha said.

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On Friday, sub-divisional police officer Soubanik Mukherjee went to the bank and asked the branch manager to summon Jaiswal. After hours of grilling, Jaiswal broke down and confessed to the crime, reported Hindustan Times.

“During the interrogation, he said that he was so addicted to buying lottery tickets that he couldn’t stop himself. He always knew he would be caught someday. He also claimed that nobody in the bank helped him,” a police officer involved in the investigation said on condition of anonymity.

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“We will ask the branch to explain why such a huge quantity of coins was not sent to the regional office or the Reserve Bank of India. Jaiswal might have stolen currency notes as well since there was no one to check him,” the police officer added.