Bank defrauded of multi-crore by well renowned school

The multi-crore fraud came into light when some teachers discovered about personal loans against their names after the death of the chairman, management committee Dr Shyam Sunder Sharma (42) on January 15. According to bank reports personal loans against 30 staff members, including teachers and 297 students. But according to sources the names of all 297 such students mentioned in the list are not on the school rolls.

The case seems to be first of its kind in which the Chairman of the management committee of Doon Dhruva Public School, a well-known ICSE-affiliated residential school near here, has fraudulently took personal and educational loans worth crores from a nationalized bank in the name of staff members and students by forging their signatures and using bogus documents

In 2006 for this school a special scheme of educational loan was approved by the bank. According to the sources the total outstanding amount of both types of loans is estimated around Rs 8 crore even as the bank authorities claimed it to be around Rs 4-5 crore. Everything appeared to be okay as per the bank’s auditing report as repayments of the loans were being made regularly. After the untimely death of Mr Sharma the repayments stopped.

It is also bizarre that the branch manager concerned did not know that more than 500 signatures and documents were fake.

After the exposure, regional manager of the Central Bank of India J.R. Sharma personally supervised the investigation and removed the manager K.J. Rawat of the Sela Qui branch of the bank after discovering the grave lapses committed by him in executing the loans.

Sharma in his statement to The Tribune said, “As per a preliminary inquiry, we have found the branch manager prima facie guilty of not executing the loan documents in his own presence which he must have done as per banking rules. This cannot be possible without his connivance. The inquiry is on but I must tell you, this is the first case of its kind in my 35 years’ banking career”. The matter has been taken up to the higher authorities of the bank and all accounts operations with school have since been stopped.

The school was started four and half years ago, run by All-India Nilkanth Educational Society, Delhi, has 310 students from all parts of the country as well from Nepal and Bangladesh. It has 305 students on rolls, including 205 boarders. Its chairman Dr Sharma was a chartered accountant in Delhi before starting the school. His wife and vice-chairman Purnima Sharma, who has been personally looking after the school after her husband’s demise, pretended ignorance when asked for her comments on the whole matter.