Mumbai: 4 booked for cheating Airoli bank of Rs 72 lakh

Four men have been booked for cheating an Airoli-based bank of Rs 72 lakh on the pretext of procuring a car loan. The accused men, had approached Axis Bank through a financial services institution and obtained a car loan, which already had unpaid loan due on them

The scam came to light after the accused stopped paying loan installments. Airoli Police have booked them under relevant sections of the Indian Penal Code for cheating.

According to police, three men — Sureshkumar Raju Palani, Atulkumar Sarabhai Parekh and Sunil Nenaram Choudhari — had taken car loans from the Axis Bank's Airoli branch. All three made the payments in a nonuniform manner.

From June 2018, Palani, Parekh and Choudhari stopped making the payments. After their names were reflected in the loan defaulters list, the recovery department of Axis Bank contacted the trio separately and asked them to make the payments. However, when contacted, they flatly refused to make any further payments and asked the bank officials to contact Pinnacle Financial Services.

The bank officials then initiated an enquiry and learnt that the trio had approached Axis Bank for car loans through Umesh Udeshi run Pinnacle Financial Services. The enquiry also revealed that Udeshi helped them get loans for buying second-hand cars by submitting the relevant documents.

A detailed enquiry revealed that Udeshi had forged the documents and cheated the bank by stating that the second-hand vehicles had no previous loans unpaid. After this revelation was made, the manager of the Fraud Control Unit of the Axis Bank approached Airoli Police and reported the incident.