Woman runs from pillar to post to get her gold back from private bank

Ravi Dhaliwal
Tribune News Service
Gurdaspur, August 1
It is a classic case of “whodunnit”. A middle aged woman had pledged half a kg of gold in March, 2022, with a renowned private bank for availing loan of Rs 17 lakh.
However, she is now running from pillar to post to get the bullion back after bank officials informed her they had already handed it back to her way back in October, 2022.

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My signatures have been forged by somebody. It is for the police to find out who has committed the forgery. Moreover, there are two signatures, one pertaining to when I deposited the gold and the other when I supposedly took the gold back. Both of them are not at all identical. Navneet Sharma, Complainant

The incident has become the talk of the town. Residents are aghast at the “lackadaisical and careless manner in which the bank is dealing with the case”.
“In future, depositors and other customers will no longer trust private banks if such incidents continue to happen. After all, where has the gold disappeared if she has not taken it back from the bank?,” said a senior police officer.
Lalit Sharma claimed that his wife, Navneet Sharma, took a loan of Rs 17 lakh from a private bank on March 7, 2022, after pledging 550 grams of gold worth Rs 35 lakh. In April this year, the couple went to the bank with a cheque of the loan amount and requested the manager to hand over the gold to them. The manager told the couple that Navneet had already taken back gold on October 12, 2022. The couple was stunned beyond disbelief. Navneet challenged bank employees to show her the CCTV footage of her taking the gold back. To this, the bank manager said, “We do not keep video footage for a long period.”
When Navneet asked bank officials to show her signatures the day she purportedly took the gold from them, she found that the signatures were hers. “My signatures have been forged by somebody. It is for the police to find out who has committed the forgery,” she said.
“Moreover, there are two signatures, one pertaining to when I deposited the gold and the other when I supposedly took the gold back. Both of them are not at all identical,” she said. The bank manager apparently washed his hands off the controversy by saying, “Please contact my seniors as I am unable to comment on the case.”
When the TNS contacted a senior bank official, a woman employee, she sent an SMS that stated, “You can send (your queries) to the bank branch. The branch team will forward it to me.” The official added that the bank had forwarded all relevant documents to the police.
Meanwhile, Harish Dayama, Senior Superintendent of Police, has ordered a probe which was being conducted by DSP Amolak Singh.
The DSP said the police had zeroed in on the main suspect and would be filing an FIR against him soon. “Once an FIR is registered, the bank employee or employees, who connived with the suspect, would be named in the case,” the police officer said.