An estimated 250 depositors, who had deposits of over Rs 1 lakh, now have little choice. They have got just the deposit insurance of Rs 1 lakh with no word on if and when they will get the balance.

Most of them are uneducated — some don’t even know how much they are supposed to get — and their deposits were the savings they and their relatives had put away over several years.

Many of them do not wish to be named fearing they may not get their arrears. However, there are those who go on the record, from a vegetable vendor to a retired government employee, to say how it was Patil’s “name” that got them to deposit their money only to watch the Pratibha Mahila Sahakari Bank turn into a family fiefdom and then sink.

As The Indian Express reported, an RBI inspection report alleged a slew of financial irregularities: loan waivers to her relatives and how six of the top ten defaulters were linked to Patil’s family. The RBI revoked the bank’s license in February 2003.

As he sits outside the shuttered bank premises in Jalgaon’s Mahatma Phule Market, 65-year-old Prabhakar Vedu Sonar, a retired field assistant in the state’s weights and measures department, fights back his tears. “I had invested my money and entire retirement benefits in the bank, Rs 1.4 lakh. Now they give me Rs 1 lakh which is the deposit insurance,” he says. “That’s over a third of my lifetime savings gone.”

Sonar, who had a heart attack in December 2006, says he can’t afford the treatment costs. “We have become slaves of the bank after investing money in it,” he says.

“I deposited my money in the bank with hopes of giving my children a better future. Now Pratibhatai will be President, what about people like me who have been cheated?” asks an angry Mangalabai Sahebrao Choudhari (40), a vegetable seller.

Like Sonar, Choudhari has got her deposit insurance but has lost Rs 17,000. “I also had to face angry relatives, including my niece, who invested money on my advice. How can a widow like me fight these powerful people?” says Choudhari, the banks’ slogan of ‘Woman are power’ (Stree Iti Shakti) mocks her from the wall.

Her husband Sahebrao committed suicide seven years ago.

Vasudeo Ramdas Phale (55), who works in a general store, is yet to receive Rs 63,000 from the bank: “We invested in the bank as it was floated by Tai (Patil). I invested all my savings but now I had to even borrow money from others to marry off two daughters.”

Nana Patil (45), a grocery shop owner, has lost Rs 12,000. “The life of the ordinary depositor has collapsed after the bank was closed down. We are happy that a person from Maharashtra will be President but what about people who lost money in the bank?”

When asked about these complaints, Pratibha Patil’s elder brother Dilipsingh Patil, who was also the bank’s legal advisor, said that the long process of liquidation was responsible for the delay in payment.

“The non co-operative attitude of the staff and rumours floated by them finally lead to the collapse of the bank. The entire board of directors resigned on August 13, 2003, to protest this,” he said. He didn’t elaborate on what these rumours were.

Around 60 km from Jalgaon in Muktainagar, Chintaman Supadu Choudhari has preserved receipts dated April 15, 1982, as proof that he and wife Ushatai purchased shares worth Rs 2000 in the Sant Muktabai Sahakari Sakhar Karkhana, also set up by Pratibha Patil.

The factory, inaugurated by Congress President Sonia Gandhi in January 1999, had a total of of Rs 58.26 crore as liabilities and was recently sealed by the Maharashtra State Co-operative Bank limited for pending loans.

“I am yet to get a refund of the money that the factory owes to me since the last 25 years. Rs 2000 seems to be a small amount but over 25 years it would have given me a significant sum but there’s nothing now. What must be the fate of the poor farmers who invested with hopes of a better tomorrow?” he says, standing outside the barbed wire fencing of the shut sugar factory at Pratibhanagar in Ghodasgaon near Muktainagar.