Man left shocked after getting Rs 9,000 crore in bank account: report

The 9,000 crore credited was later taken back by the bank, who had made a mistake in putting the money in his bank account. (Representational Image).

A Tamil Nadu taxi driver was left shocked after Rs 9,000 crore was credited to his bank account, a Times of India report said. Rajkumar, a resident of Neikkarapatti village near Palani, received the message with the updated amount on September 9 at around 3 pm in the afternoon.

"After a long day at work, I took a short nap in the afternoon (on September 9). Around 3pm, I received a message from my bank (Tamilnad Mercantile Bank) about money being deposited in my account. At first sight, I could not even count the amount as it had so many zeroes in it," he told The Times of India.

The amount credited was later taken back by the bank, who said they had made a mistake in putting the money in his account. Rajkumar transferred Rs 21,000 to a friend's account after the money was credited and less than 30 minutes later, the bank realised their error and took the rest of amount back from him.

The bank officials contacted the man on September 10 and requested him to not withdraw any more money. Incidentally, before the money was added, Rajkumar had a mere Rs 105 in his account. He further added that the bank had decided to offer him a car loan.

"The bank said that I need not return the amount I withdrew so far, and has offered me a car loan," Rajkumar said.

Bank issues clarification on incident

The bank in question-Tamilnad Mercantile Bank- issued a clarification on the incident on Saturday.

"Pursuant to Regulation 30(11) of the SEBI (Listing Obligations and Disclosure Requirements). Regulations 2015, we would like to clarify the information / news published in mainstream media regarding wrong credit to beneficiary accounts in NACH transaction. The NACH credit file received from NPCI had some invalid account numbers, in some cases, the
account numbers were of 16 digits, instead of correct 15 digits".

"When the file was processed in NACH application, the amount field got prefixed with one digit (9) and the file was uploaded in CBS. The
mistake was noticed immediately and the entries were reversed. We have now introduced additional checks for authorizing the NACH credit transactions. There is no financial loss to the Bank in this regard," the bank said in the statement.

The bank further clarified that there was no issue with the NACH system managed by NPCI. "The issue happened due to a technical glitch in our internal systems leading to the error in processing the credit to the customer. The mistake was noticed and corrective action was taken immediately. Additional controls are already implemented in
our internal systems to avoid recurrence of such mistakes in future," it stated.

Also read: SBI employee’s copy-paste error leads to Rs 1.5 crore being transferred to wrong accounts