13 men take a loan worth Rs 3.3 crore, produce a film instead
The Madras High Court has stalled the release of Tamil feature film ‘Aruva Sanda’, which was allegedly produced by the money borrowed from the Velachery branch of the State Bank of India for purchase of cars by the producers.
Justice C V Karthikeyan granted the injunction when an application arising out of a civil suit filed by the bank came up for hearing recently. The judge restrained White Screen Productions, represented by Raja, from releasing the movie starring Kabaddi player Raja and Malavika Menon in the lead roles till March 16.
According to the SBI, 13 people, including Raja, through auto loan counsellor D Chitra submitted the credentials, including KYC (know your customer) details to the bank and secured a total loan of `3.30 crore to purchase various types of car.
The bank contended that Chitra had exceeded her defined role by placing misleading facts and dubious documents before the sanctioning authorities. As an auto loan counsellor, she had gained the confidence of the bank officials. To the shock and dismay of the officials, she had also developed an access to the operating system in the computers by way of adopting certain fraudulent methods to hack the user ID and password of the officials by feeding wrong details in the prescribed electronic format.
The branch manager noted some abnormality in the sanctioning of the loans recommended/sourced by Chitra and verified the same in October last year and found that there were a lot of irregularities in the said loan accounts. Consequently, he reported the matter to the higher authorities.
On discreet investigation, it was found that Chitra had misused her position and hacked the URL of loan originating software (LOS) to process/sanction the loans without the knowledge of the bank officials from a different mode. On investigation, it was found that the loan proceeds had been utilised for the production of the film only.
Though the High Court had passed an order earlier to register a case against all the 13 people, including the producer and actors of the film, the police did not take any action and hence the present civil suit from the bank.
The bank also prayed for a declaration from the court that the bank was entitled to having a first charge from and out of the sale proceeds of the movie ‘Aruva Sanda’ produced in all languages, along with all audio, video, DVD, television and satellite telecasting rights. The interim prayer is to stall its release.
Source: The New Indian ExpressThe New Indian Express
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