Jindal staffer steals 1.30 cr by forging two cheques

Viskahapatnam/Guntur: A senior executive of Jindal Stainless Steel Limited forged the signatures of the administrative officials of the company and transferred Rs 65 lakh to various persons.

Though the offence took place a week ago, the issue came to light after the management lodged a complaint  on Tuesday. According to Airport zone police, the mastermind behind the scam was identified Kasturi Venkatesh who was remanded in judicial custody on Thursday.

According to Airport police station CI Malla Seshu , Jindal management authorised two persons to sign cheques for their daily transactions of the company.

While complainant Ravi Kumar Sinha working at the corporate office located in the city is one, the other is Dinesh Sharma, general manager, who works and lives in Kothavalasa. For convenience of daily transactions, Ravi Kumar Sinha used to collect signature of Dinesh Sharma on blank cheques and keep them with junior executive Avala Satyanarayana in the office.

As and when required,  Ravi Kumar Sinha was signing the cheques as second signatory and sending them to the SBI, NAD branch, for presentation. Kasturi Venkatesh, who has been working as executive of the company for three years, incurred losses in stock markets.

To overcome his financial crisis, he stole two leaves of cheques and forged the signature of Sinha and presented it with the bank on November 14 for an amount of Rs 65 lakh.

As the signatures matched with the specimen signatures, the bank transferred the amount to an NGO named Destiny Foundation’s Andhra Bank account at Nagaram Branch. Immediately on the same day, Rs 24 lakh was transferred to five accounts.

The remaining amount was transferred to eight more accounts during the next three days. Again, he repeated the same by presenting one more cheque for Rs 65 lakh on November 28 and transferred the amount to Annapurneswari Charitable Foundation.

The entire amount later was distributed to several accounts.  The police arrested Venkatesh from Arilova Colony in the city and an amount of Rs 7 lakh was recovered from him. He also confessed to the crime and named two more persons (Anand and Chandrakanth).