Apr 27, 2010
Bank clerk jailed for forgery
<!-- by line --> By Khushwant Singh
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SOON after helping a friend cheat a client in December 2002, bank clerk Silma Fathima Ghouse went to Sri Lanka. When the 33-year-old returned in March this year, she was arrested. She was jailed 2 1/2 years by a district court on Tuesday. Her accomplice, Anil Kumar Singh, 35, unemployed, was sentenced to eight years of corrective training in 2004 on account of his previous cheating offences. The court heard that Ghouse was working at the HSBC Bank in Orchard Road from June 1997 till December 2002 when she committed the offence.
As she and Singh faced financial difficulties, they hatched a plan to transfer money out of a bank account fraudulently. Ghouse got hold of a document from a client and Singh faked the signature on a letter instructing the bank to transfer $718,000 to the bank account of his brother-in-law. Once the money was in, he handed her $25,000. The offence was only discovered by the account-holder nearly a year later. Ghouse could be jailed up to seven years and fined for committing forgery to cheat.
