New Delhi: Her victims were mostly elderly villagers: Humble, trusting, and unfamiliar with the fine print on the forms thrust before them at the bank. With little understanding of the paperwork, they placed their faith in the person they believed was there to help—their relationship manager, whose primary job was to help them understand the financial nuances.
It was this very trust and their lack of understanding that was allegedly manipulated by Sakshi Gupta, the former relationship manager at ICICI Bank’s Kota Branch, who turned this blind spot into an opportunity for deceit with chilling precision for almost three years, right under the nose of everyone, even keeping other bank officials in the dark.
Now in judicial custody, the 26-year-old is accused of orchestrating a calculated scheme of persuading customers to unknowingly sign forms authorising the change of their registered mobile numbers to those of her own family members. In some cases, she also allegedly filled in the new numbers herself, needing only their signatures to set her plan in motion.
This meant her activities stayed under the radar as customers didn’t receive OTPs for withdrawals and the strategy kept working until it didn’t.
If it hadn’t been for a customer trying to withdraw his money from a fixed deposit account in February, Gupta might have been able to go on.
Her luck ran out when the bank manager launched an inquiry into the matter and submitted a police complaint on 18 February, attaching an inquiry report that said money had been taken out of 41 bank accounts. Gupta was arrested on 31 May. Between 2020 and 2023, Gupta is accused of having siphoned off a staggering Rs 4.58 crore from 110 bank accounts under the User FD (Fixed Deposit) scheme, turning a position of trust into a tool of deception.
She used this money to keep investing in the stock market, where she incurred heavy losses repeatedly. But she didn’t stop.
Addiction & a failed gamble
Investigators from the Rajasthan Police attribute her actions to an alleged addiction to stock market trading. However, the gamble failed as she kept losing money, derailing her original plan to return the money to the fixed deposits.
“She has said during interrogation that she wanted to be rich quickly. Her knowledge of finance and banking helped her. She kept investing the money from FDs knowing that someone breaking FDs would be a lesser risk for her as people invest for longer periods of time,” a senior police officer told ThePrint.
As per her LinkedIn profile, the 26-year-old has been working for ICICI Bank for nearly six years, since October 2019. She completed her graduation in Chemistry from Delhi University in 2018 and then got a post graduate degree in banking and finance from the Manipal Academy of Higher Education. This was her first job.
Officers say that the losses didn’t dissuade Gupta. “She kept taking out more and more money in the hope that she would get it all back and end up being rich,” the officer added.
Senior police officers said that in the past, Gupta had also invested Rs 90 lakh, taken from her father and relatives, and invested it in the share market. Here too, she lost all the money.
Investigators said that the 26-year-old devised a strategy to make trading accounts in the name of the villagers, whose money she siphoned out. “With her exercising full control on their deposits and the OTP system, she kept doing it without anyone getting a whiff about it,” another officer said.
During the probe, sources said that all account holders were questioned and her name cropped up as the connecting link.
The police zeroed in on her after they accessed the systems of all employees. “We found the saved data on her system and then took her devices to check. Investigation directed all fingers at her and she confessed to the crime during interrogation,” a senior police officer said.
She is a native of Chittorgarh, and lives in Kota after her marriage. Her husband works at the HDFC bank. So far, police say, the probe doesn’t suggest that the husband was aware of his wife’s ‘illegal’ activities.
An ICICI Bank spokesperson said, “The interest of our customers is of paramount importance to us. Immediately upon discovering the fraudulent activity, we filed an FIR with the police. We have a zero-tolerance policy against any fraudulent activity and thus suspended the employee involved. We would like to reassure that genuine claims of impacted customers have been settled.”
(Edited by Viny Mishra)