Mumbai: An accountant working for a private firm was booked for allegedly siphoning off ₹94 lakh for 11 years from her firm’s bank account to her relatives’ accounts. The woman – identified as Vaishali Vichare – credited salaries to previous employees, however, the recipients of the same were her relatives.
However, the woman eventually got caught for her crime which she carried out from 2011 to 2022. “After getting caught, Vichare apologised to the complainant, Tukaram Suryavanshi, 64, and told him that she would repay him. Since then, Vichare had repaid an amount of ₹29 lakh,” said a police officer from Bangur Nagar Police Station. “For the remaining amount, Vichare had given a cheque to Suryavanshi on Monday which bounced after which the ex-military man approached the police and reported the fraud.”
According to the police, Suryavanshi, an ex-subedar from the Indian Army, approached them on Monday and said that money from two of his firm’s accounts were being deposited in the accounts of former employees.
According to the police, Suryavanshi started the private firm in 2007 after his retirement which provided security guards. In 2011, he hired Vichare, who handled the salaries of the guards which came up to ₹1 crore every month.
In 2012, his son opened a security guard firm in Pune, said a police officer, adding, “The accounts of both the firms were being handled by Vichare. In 2022, however, when he was uploading the list of employees and their salary accounts on the bank’s portal, he noticed that a few names were of his ex-employees and salary amount totalling around ₹1.5 lakh per month was being deposited in their accounts.”
On further inquiry, the officer added that Suryavanshi found that the beneficiaries of those accounts were Vichare, her husband Sanjay Gavde and her brother Sachin Vichare. The woman was booked for cheating.