Mumbai: Rs 30L stolen from hospital's account through fake cheques

One of the blank cheques whose number has been forged to steal money from GT HospitalA NIFTYcheque con by an unknown criminal has robbed the Gokuldas Tejpal GT Hospital of Rs 3091 lakh The money was moved out from the hospitalrsquos 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 hospitalrsquos possessionThe 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 Indiarsquos 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 possessionUsed only 14 chequesldquoFor 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 nowrdquo Dr Mukund Tayade the current medical superintendent of Gokuldas Tejpal Hospital told middayHe added ldquoOur 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 3092962 had been taken from our account and deposited in an unknown account through three chequesrdquoUnused cheques forgedUpon 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 jurisdictionFIR lodgedAn officer from MRA Marg police station said ldquoAfter the case was transferred to us from the Azad Maidan police station we registered a case against unknown persons under sections 420 465 467 468 and 471 of the Indian Penal CodeldquoAfter getting the complaint we asked the bank to give details and found that by using these fake cheques R750000 was transferred on August 24 and R963400 on August 29 to the account of Sudip Ajaykar in the Dena Bankrsquos Ichalkaranji branch Another cheque was issued on August 29 wherein R1378560 were transferred to the account of Swastik Electronics in the Bank of Indiarsquos Vita branchrdquo the officer addedParallels foundThe 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 authorityrsquos 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