Cash missing from SBI ATM counters

Statesman News Service

MALDA, Feb. 1: The Malda district authorities of the State Bank of India finally lodged an FIR with the English Bazaar police station today after detecting anomalies in the physical cash balance in the reserve bin of two ATMs located in Malda town.

A total of Rs 14, 25,700 was found missing from the two ATMs on 28 January. Nearly Rs 11.12 lakh was missing from the reserve bin of ATM-II located at the Malda Tourist Lodge.

The two ATMS have been shut down and SBI authorities have begun an ‘internal’ departmental investigation to detect anomalies.

The cash shortage had been detected by an ATM officer, who informed the management on 28 January that he had failed to match the cash balance sheet based on the statement of transactions recorded in the ATMs due to shortage of cash in the bins.

The Malda SBI officials alerted the higher authorities and a senior ATM officer Mr P Dutta rushed from Siliguri to address the matter.

The chief manager of the SBI’s Malda main branch, Mr S K Chakrabarty, said Mr P Dutta had examined the accounts of the two ATMs but could not detect a definite cause for the cash shortage. “Yesterday he suggested seeking expert opinion on the situation,” Mr Chakrabarty said.

CCTV footage from the ATMs has been collected for purposes of investigation and identification.

Questions have been raised from several quarters as to the efficacy of the existing ATM system.

An FIR was lodged with police, following instructions from the SBI headquarters.

“We have held a meeting today and adopted a resolution stating that if any SBI official is found guilty he should be punished,” said Mr Himangshu Banerjee, central committee member of the SBI Officers’ Federation (Bengal circle).