Bengaluru: A Kannada movie producer has been arrested on charges of duping three banks to avail loans.

The accused Prasanna R, a resident of Vijayanagar has produced and co-produced a couple of films including Jaggesh starrer ‘Neerdose’, which released in 2016.

Sheshadripuram police, on Wednesday, arrested Prasanna, following a complaint from Chief Manager of Syndicate Bank of Sheshadripuram branch who filed complaints of cheating and forgery. It is said that the accused procured a loan of Rs 96 lakhs after producing colour photocopies of the same residential property to all the three banks.

A grain merchant, Prasanna ventured into producing films. However, his financial situation only deteriorated. With huge losses and deep debts, Prasanna had approached his friends, but none came forward to bail him out. This is when Prasanna decided to approach a bank for a loan against property. He then submitted a loan application at the Syndicate bank, Sheshadripuram branch with the original documents of his only house in Kempapura Agrahara as collateral. The bank sanctioned Rs 38 lakh loan in December 2015. However, unhappy with the loan amount, Prasanna tried to increase the amount, but his efforts met failure. He then approached cooperative banks (Daivagna Cooperative Bank and Margadarshi Chits Karnataka Pvt Ltd ) with colour photocopies of the same house documents to get the loan and thus procured Rs 20 lakhs and Rs 30 lakhs from two co-ops respectively.

The cheating came to light when Syndicate Bank officials verified the documents after he failed to repay the loan and found that he had availed loans by submitting photocopies of the same documents with two other banks. On being confronted by the Syndicate Bank officials, Prasanna had promised them to repay the loan and also issued two cheques of Rs 10 lakh and Rs 7 lakh in July and August this year. But when the cheques bounced because of insufficient funds, bank officials filed a complaint with the police.