Loan defaulter attacks bank officials in Odisha

Odisha Sun Times Bureau
Salipur, Aug 23:

In an unseemly act a loan deafulter attacked the chief manager of a commercial bank and its local branch manager and damaged their vehicle when they had gone to serve a notice to the loanee in Salipur town in Odisha’s Cuttack district.

The loanee, instead of repaying the loan incurred from the bank beat up the bank officers and tied them with a plastic rope apart from damaging their vehicle, reports said.

Reportedly, the bank authorities had gone to paste a notice at the house of the concerned person, who had taken lakhs of rupees from the bank and had defaulted on re-payment.

According to a complaint lodged at the Salipur police station,
the chief manager of Syndicate Bank Akshay Kumar Sahu and branch manager of the bank’s Salipur branch Manas Ranjan Mishra came in a Scorpio vehicle and parked their vehicle in front of the house of the loan defaulter Harekrushna Behera, near the Old Court on the Salipur-Kalagni road and called him up asking him to meet them.

While the two bank officers were pasting a notice under the Securitisation and Reconstruction of Financial Assets and Enforcement of Security Interest Act, 2002 (SARFAESI), which empowers Banks / Financial Institutions to recover their non-performing assets without the intervention of the Court, they were hurled with abuses, attacked and later tied to the iron grill of the house with plastic ropes by Behera and his men.

They even smashed the windshield of the Scorpio vehicle.

When deputy branch manager of the bank’s Salipur branch Dolagovind Satpathy came to know about the incident he with the help of the police rescued the bank officers. The damaged vehicle was taken to the police station.