MUMBAI, January 25: If you were unfortunate to have lost some blank cheques, or have been ripped off, all you can do is cross your fingers and wait. At least that is what two partners of a travel business learnt after their cheques were stolen from a drawer in their office on September 13 last year.For the last four months, Dinesh Makhijani and Chandru Shahni, partners of Crescent Travels, have been making desperate efforts to get the Santacruz branch of the Union Bank of India to commit to them about the fate of Rs 72,550 withdrawn from their account, allegedly, by a peon who had stolen two cheques from their Santacruz office.
The partners would not have discovered the theft but for a phone call allegedly from the peon, Edwin Pereira, two days later, to the office. Pereira informed his bosses that he had taken the two cheques but three men had allegedly forced him to part with the cheques and had withdrawn money from the account of Crescent Travels.
According to the First Information Report which is
registered with the Santacruz police station, Pereira had left the office on September 13, 1997, after a relative came to inform that he was urgently needed at home.
The partners discovered the theft on receiving the phone call on September 16 that an amount of Rs 72,550 had been withdrawn through one of the stolen cheques, allegedly by forging the signature of Makhijani. They instructed the bank to stop payment for the other cheque.
Since then, the bank has been corresponding with Makhijani and Shahani, but without much help. Apparently, the stand of the bank is that it will wait for the police investigations. The two partners, on the other hand, allege that the bank is stalling though the responsibility is entirely that of its employees.
Makhijani has been arguing that the amount was too big for the bank employee to have cleared without verifying the signatures of the partners. Besides, he says, the bank had not even bothered to file a police complaint, it was the partners of the agency who filed the
FIR. ``The bank has only been calling us for discussions, first to the branch office, then the general manager's office, then the legal department, and now after four months, they send us a letter on January 5, saying they will wait for the police report.''
When contacted, the assistant general manager of the United Bank of India, Rupa, said the bank was waiting for the result of police investigations. When pointed out that the alleged victims had themselves gone to the police, and the bank had done precious little, he said the bank had written to the police station on January 6 asking for a status report.
Copyright © 1998 Indian Express Newspapers (Bombay) Ltd.
