Ex-cashier of suburban Mumbai’s gymkhana held for Rs 24 lakh misappropriation

Mumbai: An ex-employee working with a gymkhana in the western suburbs was arrested by Kandivli police in a case of misappropriation of Rs 24 lakh. Police said the accused spent all the cash, and there has not been any recovery from him as yet.

The offence dates back to Feb last year. The FIR was registered on the basis of a complaint given by a senior accounts and finance manager at the gymkhana.

The gymkhana has three restaurants and two bars. A contract was made with an agency for recruiting staff for these establishments. Four cashiers were hired through this agency, and a fifth was hired by the company managing the gymkhana.

The company had set up software for managing payments of bills made by members or guests at the gymkhana. Every bill paid had to be punched through the system by the cashiers, and details such as the mode of payment had to be recorded. Each cashier was assigned an ID for using the software. The records were inspected by the complainant and his associate regularly. But due to excessive workload, they could not inspect the records for six months.

Eventually, when the complainant examined the records, there were discrepancies in the May 2024 to Dec 2024 period. The software showed more bill entries than the corresponding payments received via credit cards and online payments. The complainant concluded that one of the cashiers accepted some payments in cash from customers, but falsely entered the mode of payment as credit card or online payment in the software. The accused misappropriated Rs 24 lakh in this manner.

The IDs of two cashiers were reflected in the system. Both were quizzed by the management. It turned out that one of the cashiers, Tejraj, was using the ID of his colleague to make the false entries. Subsequently, a police complaint was registered against him at Kandivli police station.