Kolkata doctor takes 50 lakh loan on another man's PAN card, arrested

A Kolkata doctor attached to a hospital in Odisha was arrested in the city on Tuesday for allegedly procuring a personal loan of Rs 50 lakh from a private bank by using the PAN card of a namesake, police said. The incident, officers said, was part of a giant racket being investigated by the police. School teachers, a bank official, and a central government employee were earlier arrested for a similar crime.

“All these arrested persons had defaulted on loans and were not eligible for fresh loans. They used PAN cards of people whose names matched theirs and who had better banking records to get fresh loans,” said a senior officer at Lalbazar.

The police said they approached the bank for a personal loan and submitted all genuine documents except the PAN card. “All of them took the help of a middleman who had apparently provided each of them with photocopies of a PAN card of a namesake,” the officer said.

The police said Debraj Chanda, 44, the doctor, was the fifth to be arrested in connection with the case. Chanda was attached to a hospital in Park Circus in 2021 when he had taken a loan of Rs 50 lakh from the complainant bank allegedly using someone else’s PAN card.