A 51-year-old account holder in the fraud-hit Punjab and Maharashtra Co-operative (PMC) Bank died in Mumbai on Monday, hours after attending a protest march against the bank.
Sanjay Gulati, a former employee of the now-defunct Jet Airways, held an account in the Oshiwara branch of PMC Bank and media reports suggested that he had Rs 90 lakh held up.
On Monday afternoon, Gulati took part in a demonstration in south Mumbai with around 200 other customers of the PMC bank. Gulati reportedly collapsed while eating after he returned from the protest and died of a stroke. It is not known if he was suffering from any medical condition. He was taken to the Kokilaben Dhirubhai Ambani Hospital where he was declared brought dead.
Former Mumbai Congress president Sanjay Nirupam cautioned the government that more such tragedies will happen if it doesn’t act to provide “full protection” to customers. “A PMC bank depositor dies of cardiac arrest. Thousands of crisis ridden bank customers are protesting everyday in Mumbai. If government doesn’t provide full protection to them many more such tragedies may happen in coming days,” Nirupam tweeted.
The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) on Monday raised the withdrawal limit for PMC Bank account holders from Rs 25,000 to Rs 40,000. The withdrawal limit was earlier set at Rs 1,000 and after protests, the limit was increased to Rs 10,000, Rs 25,000 and then finally Rs 40,000 at different stages.
The withdrawal limit was raised to Rs 40,000 after Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman reached out to RBI governor Shaktikanta Das on behalf of the depositors. She was assured that the concerns of customers will be a priority.
The central bank had last month imposed severe restrictions on withdrawals by depositors after the Rs 4,355-crore PMC Bank fraud came to light last month.
The PMC Bank’s officials had loaned 73% of the bank’s total loan book to the Mumbai-based Housing Development and Infrastructure Ltd (HDIL). Out of the Rs 4,355.46 crore of loans under the scanner, around Rs 2,145.78 crore were transferred to accounts held by HDIL, once considered the third-largest realty developer in India.
HDIL’s chairman and managing director Rakesh Wadhawan, his son Sarang Wadhawan and PMC Bank’s former chairman Waryam Singh, who was also on HDIL’s board, have been arrested in connection with the PMC Bank fraud case.
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