Two banks to return money to those cheated

Kolkata: Two nationalised banks on Wednesday assured people who have lost their money following fraudulent withdrawal by unknown miscreants from ATMs in the city of repaying their lost amounts, a senior police officer said.

The banks’ officials held a meeting with top officers of Kolkata police and assured that they would repay their customers who have lost the money in the ATM fraud, joint commissioner of police, crime, Praveen Tripathi told newsmen.

He said that a special investigating team has been formed to probe the matter. So far, around 76 customers of two nationalised banks and one private bank, mostly from the Golpark area in south Kolkata have complained that they were duped of huge amounts of money even when they were not using their debit cards at any ATM, he said.

“So far around Rs 18 lakh to Rs 30 lakh have been siphoned off by fraudsters operating mostly from the national capital region,” Tripathi said.

Talking about the manner the money was siphoned from the accounts though the debit cards were with the customers, another police officer said that the miscreants could have used the skimming method in this case. “In this process a person will copy the details of the ATM card using a device called a skimmer and then prepare a similar card, called clone and then withdraw money from the account,” he said. The ATMs of the two nationalised banks where such incidents were reported were at Golpark and Mallickbazar. There were reports of people losing money also in Park Street, Bowbazar, College Street and Jadavpur, Tripathi said.  

“A probe is on,” he added.