Ghaziabad police arrest former manager of PNB in the loan scam where a policeman was conned off his Ghaziabad property

New Delhi, December 23

A former Punjab National Bank loan manager has been arrested by the Ghaziabad Police in connection with a loan scam.

The accused was identified as Priyadarshini who worked as loan manager in Punjab National Bank at the Chander Nagar branch. She was arrested from Greater Noida. 

The police said that the accused had allegedly bypassed banking rules to provide loans against wrongly valued assets. 

More than 39 cases have been filed in the scam estimated to be running into hundreds of crores.

The Ghaziabad police stated that the accused is a key link in the scam and was responsible for many irregularities. The accused was in collusion with many stakeholders which resulted in overvalued loans being granted. 

In this scam, 20 cases are being investigated by Ghaziabad police while others are under investigation with the Economic Offences Wing (EOW) and CBI. 

As per the case details, the crime took place between 2016 and 2017. 

Retired police constable Sukhpal Singh gave his registration papers to a property dealer identified as Lakshay Tanwar to sell his house of Kavi Nagar. The dealer and the accused woman took Rs. Three crore loan from PNB branch against her property papers between 2016 and 2017. The PNB official approached Singh in 2019 for verification process against the loan when Singh informed that he didn’t take any loan. 

Following this Singh filed a complaint against the dealer, bank, branch manager and the businesswoman. In 2020, Singh was informed that the bank has attached his property due to non-payment of loans. He filed a complaint with the district magistrate after which the inquiry revealed that the woman used same papers to seek loans from other branches and other banks. 

The accused branch manager had sanctioned loan to a businesswoman on Singh’s forged property papers. The police investigation had also found out that Lakshya Tanwar posed as property dealer to fuel the fraud. He used to trick potential "customers" who wanted to sell their property, introduce them with prospective buyers and once the deal was struck used to take the property papers under some pretext. He used to use the same papers to obtain loan through his accomplices and aides like Priyadarshini from PNB. He also used to change the loan to higher amounts in the pretext of "helping" the buyers. Once the loan amount was cleared he used to give the said sum of the loan and flee with the remaining amount. 

The Ghaziabad Police had evoked the Gangsters Act against Tanwar and several bank officials.