Canara Bank employee in Kerala arrested for fraud

Thiruvananthapuram, May 17 (IANS) An employee in a Canara Bank branch in Kerala’s Pathanamthitta, missing for months after allegedly conducting fraud to the tune of over Rs 8 crore, has been arrested from Bengaluru by a Crime Branch team, police said on Monday.Vijesh Varghese, who hails from Kollam district, was missing for about three months before the police tracked him down from a rented flat in Bengaluru where he was staying in hiding with his wife and children, and arrested him on Sunday night.After he went missing, bank officials had found out that he had been tinkering with accounts of customers and siphoning off money from them.Initial probe revealed that Varghese was using the authorisation passwords of his colleagues in the branch where he worked to commit the fraud and allegedly used this money to play in the share market and also play online rummy.With the bank taking a serious note of the fraud, four staff members of the branch were suspended from service.The police team will now start questioning Varghese and for that, he will be brought to the branch where he worked.–IANSsg/vd