TOI probe into the Rs 60-crore SBI loan scam

CHENNAI: Ain Virudhunagar and Theni districts has unearthed a string of unreported deaths of “on-paper borrowers”. While the two kingpins behind the scam are lodged in Periyakulam sub jail, at least 15 people have died under suspicious circumstances in the past six months. Another person has gone missing.Yet, there had been no probe into the deaths. Police confirmed that the deceased were all from Virudhunagar and nearby villages in south Tamil Nadu, and had loans against their names.TOI could confirm the names of three of them: Mahalingam, Pandi and Rajagopal. Police said Rajagopal was found dead on a road in his neighbourhood, and the other two died at their homes.Police registered cases of “unnatural deaths” under CrPC Section 174 and closed the files. All of them were workers in a mill owned by one of the accused in the loan fraud case.Though SBI says 169 “farmers” were sanctioned market-produce loans ranging from Rs 25 lakh to Rs 40 lakh, police say almost all of them are daily-wagers whose signatures were obtained by the two accused — O M S Velmurugan and his nephew R Shenbagan — on the pretext of getting them government pensions. Using their signature on documents, loans were credited into their temporary bank accounts from where the money was siphoned off.The fraud dawned on the victims only when the bank started sending demand notices. Nagamuthu, a real estate agent who later turned to the water business, went missing the day SBI served him a repayment notice, asking him to repay Rs 96 lakh he had taken from the bank as loan. He has been missing for more than six months. His wife Mageshwari had to pull one of her two daughters out of college because she was unable to pay the tuition fee.Investigators now say Velmurugan and Shenbagan were involved in a series of loan frauds with a value of several hundred crores of rupees in Virudhunagar and Theni districts. Though the duo managed to stay out for long, and even initiated insolvency proceedings to escape the clutches of the law, they finally landed behind bars on the complaint of a daily-wager, Veyil Muthu Alaguraja.Subsequently, police have received about 400 complaints against the duo for cheating and acquiring loans in the names of complainant. On Monday, a third suspect, identified by cops as Sannasi, was arrested.A victim’s relative, Ganesan, drafted a detailed complaint against the bank scam and wrote to the Virudhunagar district collector in March. Noting that he has not yet heard from the collectorate, he said: “Most of the victims worked at the RMPT dal mill in Virudhunagar owned by Shenbagan and at the O M S Velmurugan water works and warehouses.”Nagamuthu’s wife Mageshwari believes her husband will return. “I met Velmurugan several times at his office and begged him to pay at least Rs 44,000 to pay my elder daughter Naga Sudha’s second-year fees. God will punish those who destroyed my family,” she said. Confirming the deaths, Periyakulam police inspector Madhana Kala said, “Most of the deceased are from Virudhunagar area.”