Chandigarh, Sept. 17 — A special court under the Prevention of Money Laundering Act (PMLA) has framed charges against a former Punjab and Sind Bank manager accused of orchestrating a ₹20-crore loan fraud more than a decade ago.
The accused, Rajinder Singh Kalsi, who headed the loan section at the bank’s Sector-24 branch between June 2010 and June 2012, allegedly sanctioned 116 housing loans in fictitious names using forged documents. Investigators said he even used the passwords of subordinate staff members to carry out the transactions.
The case first surfaced in 2012 when bank officials lodged a complaint, prompting Chandigarh Police’s Economic Offences Wing to register an FIR under cheating and criminal conspiracy sections of the Indian Penal Code. Kalsi, along with liquor contractor Karan Thakur and Mohali-based businessman Pardeep Goel, was acquitted by a local court in November 2024 after the defence argued that the prosecution failed to produce original loan files and concrete evidence.
However, the Enforcement Directorate (ED) pursued a separate investigation and, in September 2023, booked Kalsi under Sections 3 and 4 of the PMLA for laundering proceeds of crime. The agency accused him of abusing his position as branch manager to sanction loans to fictitious persons and authorizing full disbursement of housing loans in one go, causing losses worth crores.
Following the ED’s chargesheet, the special court has now ordered trial proceedings. Kalsi, who has pleaded not guilty, is currently out on bail. The court has fixed December 5 as the date for recording prosecution evidence.
“The scrutiny of housing loans revealed a systematic pattern of irregularities, with loans issued to fake names and non-existent plots,” the police had alleged in the earlier case. The defence maintained that the accused was wrongly implicated, claiming investigators failed to link him to the alleged fraud.
The framing of charges by the PMLA court has revived the long-pending case, setting the stage for a fresh trial nearly 13 years after the scam was first detected.
