The Doorstep Banking Officer (DBO) of Manatri branch, Bandhan Bank , Sitaram Sahu, on April 5, had lodged a police complaint alleging that an unidentified miscreant looted him at gun point while he was on his way back from the bank's head office with the cash.
"However, investigations into the case revealed that Sahu, along with the branch manager Bhajan Kar and a friend Brajasekhar Pradhan had executed the crime. Pradhan was the one who looted Sahu at gun point," informed Mayurbhanj SP Awinash Kumar.
"The complainant had alleged he was looted while returning with the amount for distribution of loans. After receiving the complaint , we had constituted two teams. While one team was working on technical clues, the second was working on different circumstantial evidences. After a joint discussion of both the teams it was evident that the three had conspired together and misappropriated the amount," said Kumar.
Police arrested the trio and court forwarded them. The amount of Rs 3.4 lakh has been recovered from their possession.
"We have started gold loan facilities for our customers five months ago. Going forward more urban branches will offer this product," bank's Managing Director and Chief Executive Officer Chandra Shekhar Ghosh said.
"We are seeing good response in gold loans. The bank would like to grow this business in certain pockets of urban areas," Ghosh said.
He said currently, the lender was "providing gold loans facilities from its 25 branches" and would "scale it up".
It would charge around 16 per cent interest rate on gold loans but the rate would vary according to purity of gold.
Presently, micro-lending constitutes around 90 per cent of the bank's total loan portfolio.
The lender, however, was looking for a change in the business mix in the next three to five years.
"We expect in the next 3-5 years non-micro loans will be around 25 per cent of our total loan book," Ghosh said, adding that "another focus area is affordable housing segment."
Meanwhile, the private lender has started the process of identifying the investment bankers in order to initiate the listing in the stock exchanges.
According to Reserve Bank of India's (RBI) guidelines for the universal bank licence, the lender was required to get its shares listed on the stock exchanges within three years of commencement.
The erstwhile micro-finance firm had received in-principle approval from the apex bank in April 2014 and the final nod came in June 2015. The city headquartered bank had started operations on August 23, 2015.
"As per RBI requirement, we have to list on the stock exchanges. We have started the process of identifying investment bankers," he said while celebrating the completion of bank's two years' operations on Thursday.
He said the process is "long" and timing of its launch of Initial Public Offering (IPO) would depend on "market conditions".
"So, it is difficult to estimate exactly when the IPO would happen or how much fund will be raised," Ghosh said.
According to him, the bank, going forward, would also be focusing on increasing its advances to the MSME and also pointed out that there was a scope for the bank to expand its reach to the unbanked region.
The lender was in discussion with insurance companies and mutual funds to offer financial products through its network of branches and outlets, he said.
The lender currently has a network of around 840 branches and 383 ATMs serving a customer base of 11 million.
The private lender would also open 340 doorstep service centres by 2019-20, MD and CEO Chandra Sekhar Ghosh said.
Speaking to reporters at the opening of the bank's 1,000th branch here, Ghosh said its board has approved 200 new branches in the current fiscal, out of which 13 had already been opened.
Bandhan Bank has 3,014 doorstep service centres.
Regarding paring promoters' stake to 40 per cent from 82 per cent as directed by the RBI, he said that post the merger of Gruh with the bank -- awaiting NCLT approval -- promoters' holding will reduce to 61 per cent.
The bank had already made 100 per cent provisioning for its exposure in troubled IL&FS, amounting to Rs 385 crore.
Under the guidelines, the bank was required to bring down shareholding of its "non-operative financial holding company" to 40 per cent of its paid-up equity capital within three years from the date of start of business.
However, as the bank failed to comply with the licencing guidelines, a show cause notice was issued asking why a penalty should not be imposed for the non-compliance, the RBI said in a statement on Tuesday.
"After considering the reply received from the bank, submissions made during personal hearing and documents submitted, the RBI came to the conclusion that the bank had failed to comply with the licencing guidelines and decided to impose the penalty," the banking regulator said.