Kanhaiya Padvi's helplessness has only been compounded. The 51-year-old blind resident of Kalina has been conned of Rs 25,200 by his 'do-gooder', who stole his debit card under the pretext of helping him withdraw cash.
<img title="The day his debit card was stolen, Kanhaiya Padvi (left) had been accompanied to the ATM by his wife, Vijaya (right). Pic/Atul Kamble" src="http://images.mid-day.com/images/images/2016/may/Kanhaiya-Padvi.jpg" alt="The day his debit card was stolen, Kanhaiya Padvi (left) had been accompanied to the ATM by his wife, Vijaya (right). Pic/Atul Kamble" /> The day his debit card was stolen, Kanhaiya Padvi (left) had been accompanied to the ATM by his wife, Vijaya (right). Pic/Atul Kamble
Padvi, a telephone operator with Air India who lives with his family at the Indian Airlines Colony near Kalina in Santacruz East, went out with his wife, Vijaya (43) on May 6 to withdraw cash from an ATM.
&ldquo;My wife and I have a joint account in State Bank of India. We first went to a Bank of Baroda ATM, but it wasn&rsquo;t operational. A young man there told us to go to an ATM of Canara Bank in Kalina, instead,&rdquo; he told mid-day.
As the couple reached the ATM, they found the man there as well. He offered to help Padvi withdraw cash, saying he was duty-bound to help a person with disabilities, said Vijaya. Since Vijaya is unlettered, she stood outside the ATM vestibule as the man and her husband went in. &ldquo;We had just R25,300 in our account,&rdquo; she said.
Inside, the man asked Padvi to give him his debit card PIN. After Padvi gave it out, the man told him that this ATM, too, wasn&rsquo;t working. The couple then returned home.
3 transactions An SMS from SBI at night revealed the true intentions of their &lsquo;Good Samaritan&rsquo;: they found that Rs 200 was withdrawn at that time from their bank account. The next day, the couple were in for a ruder shock.
When they approached the bank, they found that Rs 25,200 had been withdrawn from their account during the course of the previous day &mdash; in two transactions of Rs 10,000, another of Rs 5,000 and Rs 200 at night &mdash; with just Rs 100 left behind. The man had switched Padvi&rsquo;s debit card with another while returning it.
&ldquo;We didn&rsquo;t get a single SMS of the withdrawals during the day,&rdquo; complained Padvi.
An officer from the Vakola police station said a case of cheating was registered on May 7. &ldquo;We are going through CCTV camera footage of the ATM vestibule. This is the second such cheating case in Santacruz in a month.&rdquo;
A furious Padvi rued that conmen do not spare even the disabled. &ldquo;I will now think twice before seeking help from others, but then again, what are my options? My wife is not literate. So, she can&rsquo;t help me in such matters.&rdquo;

The man offered to help withdraw cash from an ATM for the 51-year-old visually impaired resident of Kalina; police are scouring CCTV camera footage for clues on the culprit

Debit-card fraud: Conman swindles blind-man off his savings

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Debit-card fraud: Conman swindles blind-man off his savings

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