KOTA, Rajasthan – You put your faith in the bank, right? That crisp, reassuring feeling that your hard-earned money, especially your fixed deposits, is locked down, utterly safe. Well, that deeply held trust just got spectacularly shattered in Rajasthan’s Kota, where a senior bank officer didn’t just break that bond – she weaponized it, allegedly fleecing unsuspecting customers out of over Rs 4 crore. Her motive? The age-old siren song of quick, astronomical stock market returns. The bitter truth? Those investments tanked. Hard.
For a chilling two years, between 2020 and 2023, Sakshi Gupta – a relationship manager at ICICI Bank – was apparently orchestrating a shocking scheme. Using a loophole in the bank’s “User FD” system, she allegedly siphoned a staggering Rs 4.58 crore from 110 fixed deposit accounts belonging to 41 different customers. The funds, it turns out, weren’t being held securely; they were being gambled on the volatile stock market. When her high-stakes bets went south, she couldn’t replace the money.
The jig was up only when a customer, quite innocently, walked into the bank to check on his FD. The bank then, on February 18th, lodged a police complaint. The investigation that followed painted a picture of brazen deception.
Gupta, police say, went to incredible lengths to keep her scheme under wraps. She allegedly changed the mobile numbers linked to customer accounts, replacing them with numbers belonging to her own family. This clever move meant that no transaction alerts went out to the actual account holders. “She linked the phone numbers of her family members to these accounts and withdrew more than Rs 4 crore,” revealed investigating officer Ibrahim Khan. “She even devised a system to get the OTPs on her own computer so the account holders wouldn’t get a whiff of the fraud.” A truly elaborate setup to hide the crime.
Her spree finally ended with her arrest, a dramatic scene unfolding at her sister’s wedding late last night. She’s now been remanded to judicial custody.
ICICI Bank itself has remained conspicuously silent, offering no official statement so far. However, whispers from within the bank suggest they will make good on the losses suffered by the affected customers.
But for those who trusted, the damage to faith runs deep. Mahavir Prasad, one worried customer, rushed to the bank after news of Gupta’s arrest started circulating. “I heard that Sakshi Gupta duped people of Rs 4 crore,” he said, visibly shaken. “I came here to check if my money was safe or not.” His voice then cracked with a question that echoes a widespread fear: “Where should we keep our money? We can’t keep it at home, now we can’t keep it with the bank. What should we do?”
