India bank goof-up leaves 2 women with same account number

Patna: A government-owned bank allotted the same account number to two tribal women in Jharkhand. The result was that while one woman continued depositing money in the bank account, the other went on withdrawing the amount at regular intervals, mistaking it as money in exchange for renting out her space.

According to reports, two women bearing the same name—Marium Kandulana, residents of Kolebira block in Jharkhand’s Simdega district, had reached the local branch of Bank of India to open their account. The bank opened the account of one woman and gave her the passbook.

When another woman approached the bank to inquire about her account opening, the bank handed the same account number to the second woman, mistaking her the same person.

In the meanwhile, the husband of one woman died after which the money for the life insurance policy purchased by her husband was credited to this account. The total money deposited to the account was Rs128,900.

However, the other woman thought it to be the long-pending rent of the space she had rented out for installing a mobile tower by a telecom company and withdrew it to spend on house construction works.

The story came to light when the first woman reached the bank to withdraw the cash from her account and was told by the bank staff that the account had nil cash. It was then that the internal inquiry began and the whole story came to light.

The bank is now putting pressure on the other woman to return the cash but she has expressed her inability to return it, citing her poor financial condition. The local authorities have now begun an investigation to find out the guilty bank officials.

“We have begun investigation and are trying to find out ways so that none of the two women have to suffer,” Lead District Manager Sanjeev Kumar Chaudhary said, adding the accused bank officials would be punished after the probe.

A local social worker Dilip Tirky has blamed the local bank manager for the entire mess and has sought action against him. “The bank is victimizing the poor women while it is the bank which committed the crime,” Tirky said.

A similar thing had happened in the central Indian state of Madhya Pradesh a few years ago when the State Bank of India, another prominent multinational public sector bank, issued the same account number to two persons. In the case too, one account holder kept on depositing his hard-earned money to his account, while the second person continued withdrawing the cash, thinking Prime Minister Narendra Modi was giving him money under various government schemes.

Both the account holders bore the same name of Hukum Singh while one of them had withdrawn Rs89,000 from the account.