Anu sat at her desk impatiently tapping the table with her pen. She had checked her account for the umpteenth time since morning and there was no sign of any money being transferred to the account. She glanced at Ravi to see what he was doing. Ravi was not only her colleague in the bank she worked with but also her boy friend and the love of her life. The one she had dreamt of marrying soon. He looked up at her and smiled. She wondered what he was smiling at. She tried to check if he still had the cheque in his possession. His table looked empty. She had done her job making the entry in the system and passed on the cheque to him, but no money could be transferred till Ravi verified the transaction.
‘It is a high value transaction sweetheart, hurry up, 12 lakhs is no joke’ she tried to convey with her lovely kohl lined eyes.
She wondered what was taking him so long. She and Ravi had decided to quit the job at the Lakshmi Cooperative Bank later this week and move to Dubai. They would get married and live life “King Size” as Ravi would often say. They had accumulated quite a huge sum of money in their account and it would be enough for a long long time. She picked up her mobile and dialed Ravi’s number.
‘Pick up the phone Ravi...’
…………………………………
Eight months ago Mrs. Sanghamitra Ghosh had walked into her branch balancing herself precariously on her walking stick. She was very fond of Anu, who had always helped her with a smile. She met the branch manager and told him she was too weak to come to the branch for transactions and requested him to assign a person to help her so that she could conduct her transactions sitting at home. The manager saw that the lady had quite a good balance in her account. Her son who lived abroad had been depositing money into the account every month and she had been receiving some rental income too. He agreed to upgrade her account to a premier account so that someone could be assigned to help her with her transactions. She insisted on Anu being assigned to help her as she had been comfortable dealing with her. Anu was sent to her house the next day to collect some documents.
That is when Anu hit upon a devious plan. She not only collected the documents and signatures for upgrading the customer’s account but also original ID and address proof required to open a new account. The old lady did not suspect a thing and neither did the people at the bank. A new account was opened in the name of Sanghamitra Ghosh with all valid documents. One, which the poor lady had no inkling of and Anu was free to operate it as her own. The lady’s signatures were always scrawled indecipherably and the manager had been generous to pass her cheques whether her signatures had matched or not. It was easy for Anu to copy the signatures and by the end of one month she had become quite a pro. She marveled how she could sign better than the old lady. When the cheque book and debit cards had arrived for the new account, Anu had collected them from her branch to deliver it to the lady, but never did. No one had suspected anything because Anu had been religiously serving the customer for quite some time, depositing her cheques, withdrawing cash for her, filling out her forms, and carrying out any transaction that the lady might require help with.
