The first part of this series showed how ruthless and demeaning the recovery agents can be when they forced a Mumbai man to commit suicide and dragged a man out of his car and beat him with iron rods without caring and on top of that he wasn't the owner of the vehicle. As a continued effort toward documenting the excesses committed by the loan recovery agents employed by banks in India, the second part of this series presents a few more shocking incidents involving the misadventures of loan recovery agents. August 30, 2007: More than a dozen recovery agents, riding on bikes forced Someshwari Prasad, a famous lawyer to stop his car. Prasad was held at gunpoint, slapped and made to pay up. The only reason Prasad was mistreated because he was yet to pay the last installment of his loan, which was a sum of Rs. 6500. August 4, 2007: Vikas Porwal a resident of Ujjain who had taken a loan for a Toyota Qualis and defaulted on two repayments was abducted and held hostage at a bank premises by recovery agents. Later police raided the bank and charged the recovery agents with abduction. July 1, 2007: Jitendra Singh a resident of Eldeco Colony, was traveling in his financed Santro car when he was intercepted by four motorcycle borne recovery agents and asked him to part with the car keys. According to police they fired in the air and also looted some cash from Jitendra. These agents forcibly took a cheque and an amount of Rs. 5500 from him. Ashish, Jitendra's brother who was also traveling with him, raised the alarm and police came to their rescue. The agents were nabbed and a case of abduction was filed against them. December 25, 2005: Harinder Singh, a senior citizen who resides in sector 19, Chandigarh was threatened by recovery agents who were having a fictitious arrest warrant against his name. They used it to collect a payment of Rs. 14,300 for a default, which Harinder claimed that he had never committed. The bank later vindicated Harinder's stand and stated that no money was due and hence no demand for the money ought to have been made. However, when asked about how the bank's recovery agents were able to file legal proceedings for recovery, every concerned official skirted the responsibility. Harinder was surprised on how it was possible that some persons might have obtained the customer's name, credit card number, phone number, the amount allegedly due and falsely represented to be a police officer and a lawyer, respectively, and benefited the bank by using the threat of arrest details, without the connivance of bank officials. February 12 , 2005: Dheeraj Jain who had taken a two-wheeler loan, got an overdue payment notice from his bank, which gave him seven days to deposit the amount of Rs.1,889. But just after two days four recovery agents stopped him near Mori Gate bus terminal and snatched his vehicle. It was later sold by the bank. When confronted in courts, the bank maintained that it used 'legal' means to repossess the vehicle but the court found it otherwise. The bank was asked to refund Rs 32,205 as the cost of the vehicle since the bank had sold it. A compensation of Rs 20,000 and Rs 1000 as the cost of litigation to Dheeraj was also slapped on the bank. Disclaimer: RupeeTimes has intentionally removed the names of banks involved in the above incidents. Our aim is not to victimize any bank or tarnish its image, these incidents are tabulated here to increase the awareness about such malpractices among our readers and ensure that such unfortunate events do not occur in future. |