The Guntur rural police cracked the sensational forgery case in which investors were duped to the tune of lakhs of rupees by employees of a private bank dealing with gold loans, by arresting 17 persons at Ponnur on Thursday.

The bank employees indulged in the fraud with the connivance of a few staff members working in another company dealing in gold loan finance. The main accused was identified as Sk. Khaja, senior sales executive at ING Vyasya Bank, Ponnur, and his wife Sk. Sabina, also working in the same bank as gold loan executive.

IGP (Guntur) N. Sanjay said the police identified 27 persons as accused and arrested 17 of them. The police recovered 1.618 kg of gold and the bank had paid Rs.35 lakh to customers who had been cheated. The police also ensured that the accused paid Rs.12.98 lakh to victims.

Explaining the modus operandi, the IGP said Khaja used to pledge the gold which the customers had kept in the bank, at Keertana Gold Finance. He also used to forge documents and give cash deposit bills to customers and later pledge the ornaments at private companies on fictitious names, for higher returns.

His misdeeds came to light after two customers -- Sk. Baji and Sk. Rafi – complained to the police in March 2015. The police swung into action and issued notices to various banks to stop all transactions of 61 accounts opened by Khaja and his associates. They moved the 1.250 kg of gold pledged at Keertana Finance Company to Guntur and seized the documents. Later, the police extracted compensation from the banks and paid it to the customers.

The other accused have been identified as -- Tadikonda Sudhir Kumar, gold appraiser, ING Vyasya Bank, V. Nanda Gopal, branch operations service head, Varanasi Sivarama Kali Prasad, customer care manager, B. Ramalingeswara Rao, cashier, A. Sridhara Rao, branch head, V. Ramesh, previous branch head and M. Kranti Kumar, branch manager, Keertana Gold Loan Finance.