JAMMU: A married couple and two others were charge sheeted here for their alleged involvement in swindling Rs 5 crore in loans from a Jammu and Kashmir Bank branch in Poonch district, an official said on Saturday. The 496-page preliminary charge sheet was filed by the Crime Branch, Jammu, in a court here against Saleem Yosuf Bhatti, the alleged mastermind of the scam, Mohd Altaf and his wife Ruksana Tabassum, and Zahida Parveen, a spokesman of the agency said. The person said that Bhatti, who earlier worked as a contractual employee in the Integrated Water Management Programme (IWMP) – a central government sponsored scheme – appropriated the money by misusing his position and misrepresenting facts. The Jammu Crime branch had earlier this year registered a case in the matter following a complaint by the J&K Bank, which alleged that Bhatti along with other illegally ‘activated’ the inactive accounts of Watershed Committee at the bank’s branch in Lassana village of Surankote tehsil in Poonch. Subsequently, the accused changed names on the accounts, fabricated fake salary certificates and confirmation letters issuing them to several non-existing employees, and managed personal loans, cash credit loans, and car loans in crores by presenting themselves as government employees, the spokesman said. He said the accused also managed to open fraudulent government accounts at J&K Bank Branch Office Mendhar and Branch Office Bus Stand Mendhar. According to the official, the accused first transferred money from different branches in the accounts of Watershed Committee and other fake accounts opened by them. They then “… issued fake authority letters instructing the branches to disburse & credit the salaries in individual accounts which were later on projected as Government Employees and thus they managed to obtain loans from different other branches of the bank thereby causing wrongful loss to the tune of Rs 5 crore,” the spokesman said. All these loans are now non-performing assets of the J&K Bank, the spokesman said, adding, efforts are on to identify other people involved in the scam.
