Raj Kumar, TNN Mar 11, 2012, 04.47AM IST
PATNA: One has heard of courts restraining private banks from using force to save debts from turning bad. Here's an instance of a public sector bank auctioning the property of three people for recovering a loan which they neither took nor guaranteed.
Meet Anita Singh (47), wife of Dwijendra Kumar who works in the state cooperative department at Muzaffarpur.
The couple has been running from pillar to post since February 16 this year, the day they came to know their only house at Adarsh Colony at Muzaffarpur had been auctioned by Punjab National Bank (PNB) a day earlier to recover a loan of Rs 5 lakh which their neighbour, Ajay Sharma, had taken from PNB's Bela branch in Muzaffarpur in 1999.
As Ajay of Jai Mata Di Fabrics went missing along with his family members from their house, the bank issued notices to the guarantors, including one Aniruddh Prasad of East Champaran district.
In his reply to the bank's legal notice, Prasad informed the bank that in November 2003, he sold his 2-kattha land - 'khata' number 120, 'khesra' number 568 - in Ajay's neighbourhood to one Kusum Devi in 1981 (almost two decades before Ajay took the loan) and that he never signed any document related to any loan from any bank to Ajay.
According to documents available with TOI, Kusum sold the land in pieces to Poonam Jha, Ram Bahadur Thakur and Anita Singh in 1997. While Singhs and Thakurs constructed houses, Jha sold her land to one Radha Rani in 2004.
All this could have been known had the PNB, in response to Prasad's reply to its notice, bothered to check the land records in the Musahari circle office. Instead, the PNB moved the Debts Recovery Tribunal (DRT) where it submitted the allegedly fake land documents on the basis of which the DRT, in August 2007, passed the decree in favour of PNB. None of the current owners of the plot was made a party; nor were they even intimated about the hearings.
Armed with the decree, PNB auctioned Ajay's house as well as the three adjacent plots for Rs 47 lakh on February 15.
A horrified Anita Singh has since visited the PNB's branch office, regional office and circle office in Muzaffarpur.
All she got was advice to meet Saba Ahmad, PNB's official at its Rajapul branch in Patna. Her husband went rushing to Ahmad who redirected him to visit DRT.
DRT officials refused to acknowledge the Singhs as a "party" and it was only after quite a scene that they were asked to hire a lawyer to plead their case.
But why did the then bank manager sanction the loan against allegedly fake documents?
What action will the PNB bosses take against him?
Why did the then PNB authorities ignore Prasad's reply to their legal notice?
Who will compensate and what, for the harassment caused to the Singhs and others?
PNB's chief manager Naresh Batra, who also looks after the bank's public relations, refrained from replying to these questions.
"But there's a proper forum -- Debts Recovery Appellate Tribunal - from where victims in such cases can seek remedy," he told TOI over phone on Saturday evening.
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