December is the follow-up month at TNM where we go back to headlines of the past for a status update. In this series, we strive to bring focus back to promises made by governments, revisit official investigations that should have been completed by now and exhume issues of public interest that lost steam over time.
Ever since the Rs 100 crore scam at the Karuvannur Service Cooperative Bank in Kerala’s Thrissur came to light in 2019, much has gone down in the state. The Joint Registrar of Cooperation (Thrissur) had ordered a probe into the allegations at the time, which was completed in October 2020, but no action was taken. The scam received media attention a year later in 2021, when 63-year-old TM Mukundan, a former member of the Porathissery panchayat, died by suicide after receiving a foreclosure notice for recovering amounts that he never borrowed. This attention, however, did not last long. In fact, it took yet another tragedy in July this year — the death of 70-year-old Philomena Devassy, a depositor to whom the Karuvannur bank failed to issue money for her treatment — for the massive scam to come to limelight again.
As more depositors began to come out and reveal their plight, one worse than the other, the state’s Left Democratic Front (LDF) government had to move quickly for damage control. Social Justice Minister R Bindu, who is also the MLA for the Irinjalakuda constituency under which the bank lies, personally visited some of the victims and assured relief. In August, Cooperation Minister Vasavan announced a special package to repay the depositors’ money. And slowly, the media too began to let go.
Now, four months later, the people who fell victim to the scam and lost their savings of a lifetime feel they are once again being forgotten, still awaiting a way back to their own hard-earned money, with seemingly no one to turn to for help.
According to Devassy, husband of Philomena who died at the Thrissur Medical College Hospital on July 27, the bank still owes the family an amount of Rs 64,000. “We have no one to ask for help. The people who are responsible for this do not even respond to us humanely. It feels like they have no intention to give us the money. Their attitude is that they will give us the money if they ever get it,” Devassy told TNM.
Devassy had toiled in Mumbai for decades before coming to live with his family in Kerala and depositing his family’s lifelong savings of Rs 30 lakh at the Karuvannur bank. But at a crucial hour of need, when his wife was on the hospital bed fighting for her life, Devassy had no way to access their earnings of a lifetime. Philomena, a retired government nurse, died allegedly without receiving the money needed for her treatment.
Later, the media attention and public outrage after the family staged a protest in front of the bank with Philomena’s body helped them get back a major share of their money. But they are yet to receive the pending amount of Rs 64,000, Devassy said.
Earlier in February, the government had proposed a package that included a consortium with 160 other cooperative banks in the state to raise Rs 50 crore to repay the Karuvannur bank depositors. Minister Vasavan told the Assembly in August that the package was on the anvil. Stating that the properties of all those accused of being involved in the scam would be confiscated, he also said that the administrative body of the bank had been directed to implement the special package for repayments with the help of the Kerala Bank. So far, all the promises still remain on the paper.
Another depositor John told TNM that out of the Rs 11 lakh deposit he had made at the Karuvannur bank, he has only received Rs 5 lakh so far. That too was seemingly in response to the public hue and cry after the death of Philomena. “When I ask for the rest of the money now, the authorities’ attitude seems to be that since I have already received [Rs 5 lakh], their priority is those who did not get any amount of the deposit back. When the package was announced, they had collected the details of depositors whose money was not repaid. We were asked to submit applications with details of our identity cards, etc. We did all that, but there have been no new developments,” he added.
Joseph too had deposited the savings of a lifetime at the Karuvannur bank after spending years working in the Gulf. Among his three sons, two have intellectual disabilities. Even when his wife Rani had to undergo a surgery recently, the family had not received any money from the bank. “Why wait for something sad [like the death of Philomena] to happen before hearing the depositors’ pleas,” wondered Rani.
Joseph has complaints about the lethargic attitude adopted by the government soon after the attention on the scam began to die down. “Minister Bindu did not even visit us. We all voted her to power, but she didn’t bother about us after that. What we need is a leader who would keep the issue alive until we get the money. Besides, in this case, most of the depositors are also Communists. Hence, there is no united attempt to pressure the authorities. When I speak about the need for a united fight, these Communists respond coldly. Now I have lost all hope that I will get the money,” he added.
The board members of the Karuvannur bank were also mostly local leaders of the Communist Party of India (Marxist). With the probe by the Crime Branch still underway, it has been established that even if some of these leaders weren’t involved in the scam, they are at least guilty of failing to check the fraud carried out by some of the bank officials using fake documents, remortgaged properties, benami transactions, and forgery.
AV Stephen, another depositor, has received only Rs 1 lakh back from his deposit of Rs 10 lakh. A farmer by profession, Stephen had deposited Rs 5 lakh each in the name of his two children in 2017. Now, his daughter’s wedding has been scheduled to be held in January next year, but he has failed to get any more money from the bank. “I went to the bank last Thursday and again on Saturday. I was told that I will be given Rs 50,000 for the wedding. In despair, I said that I don’t need that money. What will I even do with Rs 50,000?” he asked.
Stephen needed to submit his daughter’s wedding invitation card and a letter from the church stating that the wedding had been fixed to even apply for the withdrawal of his deposited money. “Imagine, this is my own money and I need to go through all of these procedures to get access to it.” He is now planning to pledge his house and land to avail a loan for the wedding.
Princy, who had deposited Rs 18 lakh in the bank six years ago, had hoped that her life’s savings would come in handy at a time of need. “I got back 10% of it, which is Rs 2.10 lakh, just last week. But my gut feeling is telling me that I won’t be getting any more in the near future because they gave me this 10%,” she told TNM, adding that she had saved the money keeping in mind her daughter’s wedding among other plans.
“Now we can’t even make a decision regarding her wedding because of this uncertainty,” added Princy, who is a retired government employee. The 61-year-old was the only earning member of her family, as her husband Thomas had certain health issues that prevented him from going to work.
Velayudhan, an autorickshaw driver and a retired employee of the Health Department, has stopped the construction of his house after being fed up with the repeated failed attempts to withdraw the money from the bank. “Of the total Rs 18 lakh we had deposited, what we got is Rs 10,000. The bank is repaying a few thousands of rupees to people who had deposited lakhs. After the public’s outrage over Philomena’s death mellowed down, no one has done anything to help us,” said Surjith, Velayudhan’s son.
Meanwhile, the government's stand is that the depositors are being repaid as per the rehabilitation package submitted jointly by the Department of Registration and the government at the High Court. According to Minister Vasavan's office, the total deposits repaid as of November 21 is Rs 54.76 crore. The deposits repaid as per the High Court’s directions from August 15 to November 11 this year is Rs 7.20 crore. What is being repaid now is 10% of the deposits that are mature with 50% of the interest,” a source from the Minister's office said.