The forged drafts bear such a striking resemblance to the originals that even banks cleared those without expressing any doubt. The incidents of forged draft have a larger ramification with bank draft being the only trusted tool for any major bulk transaction.
The racket seems to be well organised. “The person, who came to me on December 6, was suave, fluent in three languages and presentable in every sense of the word. He introduced himself as Amulya Acharya (50), a doctor from Raniganj and attached to the statewide immunization campaign. Acharya said he needed to buy a few laptops to present to some doctors at a workshop. I found his words very convincing. Besides, he told me a few things that only a doctor could say,” said Koushik Mukherjee of Junction IT at Salt Lake, one of the victims of the forged draft.
Only a few days later, Acharya placed an order for
three laptops with Mukherjee. But he did not turn up on December 16, the day he was supposed to come. He told Mukherjee over phone that he could not come, but his man would definitely be there with the bank draft the next day. Again, Acharya called up that day to say that his man had reached Howrah.
“The person said he was carrying only a draft for Rs 90,000 while the three laptops cost Rs 1,80,000 (Rs 60,000 each). But the person (Acharya) asked me to deliver only one laptop to his man and he would come personally to collect the other two by paying a draft for the remaining Rs 90,000. That led me to believe that he was a genuine customer. But I still checked out the draft in detail and found no fault with it,” said Mukherjee.
“The next day, even my bank — Syndicate Bank — cleared it for encashment. The draft, however, was returned to me as forged from the service branch of the State Bank of India,” he added.
Later, Mukherjee found out that several other businessmen, two from Asansol and three more in Kolkata, had also been defrauded. In every case, the draft No. was the same. It appears that the racket has the technology and the tools to produce near perfect fake drafts.
“We have found similar complaints from some other parts of the state। So, we are looking into it,” said a senior CID officer.
Source: Times of India
