Bank officials down shutter to hide from irate customers

MEERUT: Employees at the Punjab National Bank (PNB) branch in Chilkana downed the shutter and locked themselves in after an angry crowd outside the bank turned aggressive. Customers had started queuing up at the branch in Chilkana since morning on Thursday.
As soon as they were told that the bank had run out of cash, they started hurling abuses. However, police reached the spot by 9:30 am and brought the situation under control.
“Customers, like every day, had started gathering at the branch from early morning. By 9 am, a sizeable crowd had gathered outside the bank branch. Around that time, they were told that there was no cash available in the bank. People, who had been queuing up since the morning, got angry and some of them started hurling abuses at the bank staff,” said Girish Jain, station officer at Chilkana police station.
He added, “The situation became worse when some of the customers got over aggressive. At that point, the officials, who were trying to explain to customers that there was nothing they could do about the cash crunch, retreated inside the bank. They downed the shutter to stop some of the angry customers from entering the premises. Minutes later, the police reached the spot and brought the situation under control. We asked the people to be calm down even though we know that they are facing hardships.”