Bengaluru: A Kannada movie producer was arrested for duping three banks by taking loans worth Rs 96 lakh by producing colour photocopies of same set of residential property documents to all the three banks.
The accused, Prasanna R., a resident of Vijayanagar, was arrested by the Seshadripuram police on Wednesday based on a cheating and forgery complaint filed by the chief manager of Syndicate Bank, Seshadripuram branch.
Prasanna, who is the producer of Beautiful Manasugalu, a Kannada movie released in 2017, and co-producer of Neer Dose, released in 2016, is also a grain merchant. He had incurred huge losses in his business and was deep in debt. Prasanna had approached his friends for a loan of Rs 1 crore, but no one bailed him out of his financial crises.
Prasanna then decided to approach a bank for a loan against property. He got in contact with the Seshadripuram branch of Syndicate Bank and submitted the loan application with the original documents of his only house in Kempapura Agrahara as collateral. The bank sanctioned Rs 38 lakh loan in December 2015.
But Prasanna needed more money and tried to get the loan amount increased, but the bank did not agree. Then he approached cooperative banks with colour photocopies of the same house documents to get the loan. He was sure that he would easily get the loan as cooperative societies would not check the authenticity of the documents.
He submitted the documents to Daivagna Cooperative Bank and Margadarshi Chits Karnataka Pvt Ltd and got Rs 20 lakh and Rs 38 lakh loan sanctioned a few months later.
The cheating came to light when Syndicate Bank officials verified the documents after he failed to repay the loan and found that he had availed loans by submitting photocopies of the same documents with two other banks.
When bank officials asked Prasanna to explain, he admitted that he had taken loans from the two banks by furnishing photocopies of the same documents he had submitted to Syndicate Bank. But he assured the bank officials that he would repay the loan and issued two cheques of Rs 10 lakh and Rs 7 lakh in July and August this year. But when the cheques bounced because of insufficient funds, bank officials filed a complaint with the police.
The Seshadripuram police, who registered a case and arrested Prasanna, are also investigating if bank officials had colluded with him to sanction the loans without properly verifying the documents.
