Udupi: Five Allahabad Bank staff have been charged for cheating six customers who had pledged gold ornaments and taken loans.

K.H. Pai(the then manager of the bank), Deb Prasad, Satish Shettigar, Bhaskar and Sharath Kumar are the accused.

A complaint was filed by Shobha K., a customer from Ambalpady through Bimal Krishnan, manager of Allahabad Bank with the Udupi Town Police. According to the complaint the customer had pledged 58.56 gm and taken a loan of 1.15 lakh. Similarly, Taj Mohammed of Kaup had pledged 43.1 gm of gold ornaments and taken a loan of Rs.78,000; Krishnanda Nayak pledged 69 gm of gold ornaments and took a loan of Rs. 1.2 lakh; Pratibha S. Rao from Udupi pledged 115.8 gm of gold ornaments and took a loan of Rs. 2 lakh; Shakuntala from Tenkanidiyur pledged 24.2 gm of gold ornaments and got a loan of Rs. 44,000; and Sridhar Rao K. from Udupi pledged 119 gm of gold ornaments and availed a loan of Rs. 2 lakh.

But the five employees of the bank misued the gold ornaments worth Rs 7.57 lakh of the customers for their own private purposes. Instead of depositing the gold ornaments in the locker, used it for their own purposes, which was dereliction of duty and betrayal of trust of the customers.

The misuse of ornaments came to light when Shobha came to the bank on March 10 to get back her gold ornaments. But these ornaments could not be recovered. Inspection was conducted by the Chief Manager of Zonal Office of the bank and he found out that the employees have misused the ornaments.

A case has been registered under Section 409 (Criminal breach of trust by public servant, or by banker, merchant or agent) of the IPC and investigations were on, the police said.