Pulppalli Co-operative Bank loan fraud: 2 more accused receive bail

Wayanad: Among the ten accused in the Pulppalli Co-operative Bank loan fraud, bank secretary KT Remadevi and director board member Sujatha Dileep received bail from the Vigilance Court, Thalassery. With this all the ten accused in connection with the fraud received bail.

The accused include former bank director board president KK Abraham who is also the former general secretary of Kerala Pradesh Congress Committee, Co-operative bank loan division head P U Thomas, bank directors T S Kurian, Mani Pambanal, Bindu Chandran, CV Velayudhan, VM Poulose and the middleman Sajeevan Kollappalli. All the accused were on bail in another case registered by Pulppalli police in connection with the fraud.

Among the accused, Sajeevan Kollappalli has been remanded by the Enforcement Directorate (ED) as he had failed to explain the money flow to his account from various other accounts. He was arrested on 26th September in connection with the ongoing investigation registered by ED under the PMLA (Prevention of Money Laundering Act-2002). The Vigilance Court would consider the case on February 9.

Though there were many complaints against the bank earlier, the fraud came to media focus after the suicide of the farmer Rajendran Nair, 60, at Pulppalli, here. Mr Nair had to take an extreme step on May 30, as the bank authorities had neglected his complaints regarding the fraud. Though the farmer had availed only a loan of Rs 80,000, going by the bank records, Mr Nair had pledged his land in the bank for Rs 25 lakh. The rest of the money was allegedly siphoned off by the accused and his accomplices, according to police. In another case, a farmer KP Daniel had taken a loan of Rs 2 lakh from the bank in 2018 pledging a total of 63 cents land in two pieces separately owned by himself and his wife Sarahkutti. Shockingly Daniel received a notice from the bank to remit an amount of Rs 36 lakh to the bank as he had failed to remit the repayment in time.