Two postal staff cheat pensioners of Rs 1.3 crore in Karnataka's Yadgir district

YADGIR: Two employees of the postal department sub-branch in Gogi, Yadgir district, have allegedly swindled pensioners to the tune of Rs 1.37 crore.
A case has been filed at Gogi police station against the employees and other two persons suspected to have pulled off the fraud in Yadgir district. Of the two accused employees, one employee allegedly committed suicide fearing arrest.
The postal employees have been identified as Sardar Naik of Indi, and Trishul, a resident of Yadgir district.Fearing arrest, Trishul allegedly committed suicide a day before the case was filed. The other two accused are Gururaj and Nilesh, relatives of Naik.
Ayyappa, the inspector at Gogi, told TOI that Naik and Trishul were working in the Balabatti sub-branch post office for two years.
They allegedly swindled beneficiaries of the Sandhya Suraksha scheme, some of who were widows, as well as other pensioners. The police have identified 293 account holders who may have been cheated.
Duo opened 8 a/cs in the same branch
Using their friends' contact numbers, the duo opened eight accounts in the same branch and linked those numbers to the 293 accounts.
Besides, they also got the user IDs of their other colleagues, who were unaware of their plan. Then, they linked and delinked each account to withdraw money from all 293 customers, the police inspector said.
They generally targeted pensioners who had not withdrawn the money deposited into their accounts for the past few months.
In this way, the duo siphoned off Rs 1.37 crore into their accounts.
Naik also involved his relatives, Gururaj and Nilesh, by transferring some amount into their accounts. The two had withdrawn money from the 293 customers from September 2021 to May-end of this year.
This fraud came to light during the annual audit of accounts as the accused also withdrew an amount from some customers who died last year and their accounts remained inactive.
Suspecting something fishy, the audit team intensified their watch and tracked the fraud.
"We filed a cheating case on June 11. Fearing arrest, one of the accused, Trishul, ended his life by consuming poison. The other three are untraceable. We have launched a manhunt to nab them," the police inspector said.
SP C B Vedamurthy said: "We have formed teams to nab the accused and we will soon arrest them."
He also appealed to all beneficiaries of pension schemes to withdraw money regularly and keep track of their accounts.