Punjab and Maharashtra Co-operative Bank is under Reserve Bank of India administration due to loan default of 6,500 crore rupees by Housing Development and Infrastructure Ltd. First RBI said depositors can withdraw only 1,000 rupees for six months. Later it increased that amount to 10,000 rupees. PMC is forbidden to accept deposits and give loans.
Rakesh Kumar Wadhawan and Sarang Wadhawan are senior executives of HDIL. Rakesh Kumar Wadhawan is Executive Chairman, Founder and a promoter of HDIL. Sarang Wadhawan is Vice Chairman and Managing Director. Lalit Mohan Mehta, Raj Kumar Aggarwal, Hazari Lal and Sandhya Baliga are independent directors.
Police have registered FIR under IPC sections 120B, 409, 420, 465, 466 and 471. Economic Offences Wing has formed a Special Investigation Team to probe the matter.
49 fixed deposit accounts were shut prematurely and money withdrawn 6 days before PMC collapse.
As per police complaint, PMC officials used more than 21,000 accounts to hide loans to HDIL. This began in 2008. RBI audit was lax. Innocent depositors had to suffer. Those who had their weddings in November are in trouble. Families need more than 10,000 rupees for six months. It is said that 63% depositors can fully withdraw their amounts with 10,000 rupees limit.
Bharat Mankermi had his life savings worth 30 lakh rupees in PMC. He suffered a stroke.
Satinder Singh, 42, had deposited 2.6 crores in PMC. He had earned it over 20 years. He said if he does not get his money back he will commit suicide in front of RBI building. His wife and parents have accounts in PBC. He planned to take his mother for knee replacement surgery.
Depositors should keep money in different banks. All money should not be put in one bank. Government is making that difficult by merging banks. It merged with SBI its subsidiaries. Two banks were merged with Bank of Baroda. Soon six banks will be less as they will be merged with other banks.
Suspended Managing Director of PMC, Joy Thomas, has given excuses for not reporting bad loans like fear of reputation loss and not being able to charge interest once a loan is declared non-performing asset. On 17/9/2019 RBI received a letter about PMC. On 18/9/2019 Joy Thomas met RBI Executive Director Rabi Mishra and sought time to put things in order. On 23/9/2019 RBI took over PMC. As per one report Joy Thomas in untraceable.
On 1/10/2019 PMC depositors protested in front of RBI building, Bandra-Kurla Complex. There were protests in Andheri, Mulund and other places.
Many co-operative banks are under RBI administration due to bad loans. Many national public sector banks have bad loans running into lakhs of crores of rupees. There should be suitable punishment to deter crimes. Sentences should run consecutively, not concurrently. If punishment for opening a fake bank account is 2 years, it should be 42,098 years jail for 21,049 accounts. If punishment for fraud of 1 rupee is 1 day jail, it should be 6,500 crore days jail for fraud of 6,500 crore rupees. It should be full punishment for each criminal involved. Properties of criminals should be confiscated to recover loss. When number of jail days adds up to 14 years it should be converted to death penalty. If the days add up to 140 years it should 10 death penalties.
