ED attaches land of Bhojpur resident

Ara: The Enforcement Derectorate (ED) officials conducted on Saturday attached about eight kathas of land belonging to Surendra Tiwari and his wife Savitri Devi at village Chirbilia under Piro police station area in Bhojpur district in connection with a case of Rs7.5 crore fraud while working with the State Bank of India (SBI) at Patliputra branch in Patna in 2007.
The ED had already attached four flats and about one katha of his land at Rajiv Nagar, Patna, and three houses in Kolkata worth about Rs4 crore. Assistant director, Enforcement Directorate, U K Gautam said Surendra, son of Ram Raj Tiwari of village Amheta under Piro police station, joined the SBI after retiring from Army in 2001. He was promoted to the post of clerk in the same branch in 2007. Surendra allegedly used to copy the government cheques submitted to the bank and sent their MMS to his gang members who used to make fake cheques bearing the same numbers and amount. They used to get open bank accounts by innocent and illiterate people in Haryana, Gujarat, West Bengal, Mumbai and other states besides Bihar in different banks. The gang members kept their passbooks, signed cheques, and even the ATM cards of the account holders. Later, they used to deposit the fake cheques into those bank accounts. Once the cheques were credited into those bank accounts, they drew the amount. They had fraudulently drawn about Rs7.5 crore of government money.
The gang members had purchased flats, houses and plots of land either in their names or in the name of their family members.
When the matter came to light, an officer of the EOU filed a case against the gang members in 2013 and arrested all of them, including Surendra. However, they were enlarged on bail in 2014.