New Delhi, Nov 17 : A private investment group on Monday claimed to have suffered a huge loss due to the acute apathy of Axis Bank, and blamed the bank for issuing of duplicate cheques that eventually bounced.

The Managing Director of the Shree Om Sainath Group, Roopesh Verma, told a news conference here on Monday that the alleged fraud had been going on for quite some time.

“This huge fraud and neglect has been going on for quite some time, despite our repeated reminders and numerous e-mails sent to a great number of authorities of various levels from top to bottom, including the President of the Axis Bank, Ms. Shikha Sharma,” said Verma.

Verma, during the conference, distributed some copies of cheques and his company’s correspondence with the bank to substantiate his allegations with ‘proof’.

He said that his company exchanges thousands of cheques running in crores of rupees which are credited /debited every month, in the twelve functioning accounts with the various branches of Axis Bank across the country.

He showed to the media that the bank has issued two different cheques of exactly same number to two different people. He claimed that though the bank acknowledged their mistake but they refused to take any action.

Verma said: “Due to the duplicate stationary / cheques our clients have been facing problems of their cheques bouncing, with reason item listed twice.”

He also narrated the problem was related to the identification of original cheques from duplicate ones, as both are issued by Axis Bank only. He alleged that the bank never helped his company in this regard.

Verma also alleged that some of the cheque leaves issued to his company by the bank were without the cheque number printed on it and all such cheques had been returned promptly to the company.

The company claimed that some of fraud cheques allegedly issued by it got credited in an account of the Axis Bank, but the bank did not heed repeated requests by the company to provide address and details of the offending account holder.

“The saddest part is that they did not even take care to check the authorization of the signature, otherwise this credit would not have occurred in the first place,” Verma said.

The company also alleged that the bank cleared the cheques with multiple corrections, and also cheques containing fraud signatures.

Verma said his objective was to press the alarm button to aware public of such frauds and also demanded an inquiry into the entire episode.

“We demand a full-fledged inquiry into the matter whoever is the culprit should be brought to books,” Verma said. (ANI)