Out on debt recovery, bankers held hostage

Kulwinder Sandhu

Tribune News Service

Moga, March 29

Two bank employees, including a manager, were today taken hostage for a few hours by activists of the BKU (Ekta) when they went to the house of farmers Gurjeet Singh and Gurpreet Singh, both brothers, at Raonta village here to recover a loan of Rs 10 lakh from their father, Tek Singh.

Tek Singh told mediapersons that the bank officers threatened to arrest him, besides insisting on attaching his property even as their total credit limit was Rs 50 lakh.

“We suffered financial losses in the last couple of seasons due to which we could not repay the loan,” Gurjeet Singh said. As the bank officials were sitting in their house, neighbours informed the local BKU activists, who reached the spot and detained the officials. They also raised slogans against them.

The farm activists claimed that the government had asked the bank employees not to conduct raids on the houses of farmers for forcibly recovering the loan amount.

Later, the bank officials assured the gathering that they would not visit any farmers’ house to recover loan, following which they were released. Bank official Chandan Kumar said both brothers had credit limit of Rs 25 lakh each and the total interest had accumulated to Rs 10 lakh in the past couple of years. “We issued several notices to them but they did not even visit the bank in the past two years,” he claimed.

The bank is likely to declare them defaulters on March 31 and they went to their house to inform about it and request them to at least pay the interest amount.