A cheque con by an unknown criminal has robbed Mumbai's GT hospital of Rs 30.91 lakh. Signature of medical superintendent and cheque numbers from chequebook were forged for three transactions
One of the blank cheques whose number has been forged to steal money from GT Hospital
A NIFTY cheque con by an unknown criminal has robbed the Gokuldas Tejpal (GT) Hospital of Rs 30.91 lakh. The money was moved out from the hospital’s Rajiv Gandhi Jeevandayee Arogya Yojana (RGJAY) account through a series of fake cheques that contained forged signatures of the medical superintendent. However, the original cheques are lying unused and still in the hospital’s possession.
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The complainant in the case is Dr Dattatray Kulkarni, who was the medical superintendent at GT Hospital when the forgery occurred in September. GT Hospital holds it RGJAY account in the Union Bank Of India’s branch at Bazargate in Fort. As per the rules, the medical superintendent is the only one authorised to withdraw cash from the account. The chequebooks for the account are in his possession.
Used only 14 cheques
“For any kind of cash transaction, we use cheques. Our old chequebook got over and we applied for a new one on June 18, 2016. Within 15 days, we got new chequebook through post. The book had 50 cheques out of which we had used only 14 as of now,” Dr Mukund Tayade, the current medical superintendent of Gokuldas Tejpal Hospital told mid-day.
He added, “Our previous medical superintendent Dattatray Kulkarni asked our clerk to take the monthly statement from the bank as we do at the end of every month. On September 3, our clerk visited the bank and got to know that Rs 30,92,962 had been taken from our account and deposited in an unknown account through three cheques.”
Unused cheques forged
Upon inquiring with the bank, Kulkarni found that the number of the cheque used to withdraw cash matched the number of the unused cheques he had in his safe. It was concluded that an unknown person made duplicate cheques of the same number and used it for the transactions. The forged cheque numbers have been picked at random from the book and used for the three transactions. A written complaint was sent on September 3 to the Azad Maidan police station, that later transferred the case to the MRA Marg police as the bank from where the transactions occurred falls under their jurisdiction.
FIR lodged
An officer from MRA Marg police station said, “After the case was transferred to us from the Azad Maidan police station, we registered a case against unknown person(s) under sections 420, 465, 467, 468 and 471 of the Indian Penal Code.
“After getting the complaint, we asked the bank to give details and found that by using these fake cheques, R7,50,000 was transferred on August 24 and R9,63,400 on August 29 to the account of Sudip Ajaykar in the Dena Bank’s Ichalkaranji branch. Another cheque was issued on August 29 wherein R13,78,560 were transferred to the account of Swastik Electronics in the Bank of India’s Vita branch,” the officer added
Parallels found
The MRA marg police have found parallels with other cases registered with them and the Colaba police station. Cops found that the cheque numbers were leaked to criminals, who then make fake cheques and use it to withdraw money after forging the authority’s signature. Most of the times, these cheques are issued to branches of banks in the rural areas. It is being suspected that this con could be an inside job.
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