PATNA: First, it was his estranged wife who left 60-year-old Dwarika Prasad. Now, fortune too, has abandoned him and left him virtually penniless. Prasad, a ghee trader, had kept all his savings, cash and kind, in the bank locker of Central Bank of India's Naya Tola branch here.

On January 29 this year, when he opened the locker, he found to his horror that all his cash and fixed deposit documents had been destroyed by termites. In fact, even the gold and silver ornaments had been attacked by the pests and have lost their sheen.

Prasad claims he had kept Rs 4.5 lakh in cash, FD papers, Kisan Vikas Patras and National Savings Certificates worth Rs 2.5 lakh apart from some gold and silver jewellery in the locker two years ago. He showed the perforated currencies and documents to the bank authorities, who in turn showed him a notice pasted on the wall near the locker room requesting customers to remove their important papers from lockers as termites were eating up the documents!

But, unfortunately for Prasad, he hadn't visited the bank for the last nine months and did not see the notice. A badly shaken Prasad submitted an application to the branch manager requesting compensation.

"The bank isn't aware of the deposits kept by a customer in the locker. It was in May 2007 that the bank had put up a notice near the locker room asking customers to check their documents as white ants might destroy them. The notice was put up after two or three customers complained that termites had damaged their papers," said the branch's senior manager Y P Saha.