Devil in Pinstripes (23 page)

As the interrogation progressed, they decided to bring in Shanmuga. Rajesh called him on his mobile, summoned him to the office and Shanmuga didn’t seem to have any reservations. Normally if you are sacked for fraud, you would hesitate going to the same organisation again. Not Shanmuga. Something in the conversation told Rajesh that Shanmuga was being made a scapegoat. The latter was in the same neighbourhood and agreed to come in straightaway. This biased Rajesh who after the conversation sensed that Shanmuga could be innocent.

Within the next sixty minutes, Shanmuga strode confidently into the T-Nagar branch of NFS.

Again like the four customers who came in earlier, Shanmuga didn’t look like a fraud. He seemed to be a nice and honest guy. A typical Tam-brahm. If he wasn’t, why would he come in within sixty minutes, especially considering the fact that he had been sacked a week ago. He could have shown them the finger and stayed away.

When confronted with the facts Shanmuga had only one thing to say – ‘Look, I don’t know any of these customers. I haven’t met any of them. Ten days ago, Sharmila called me.’

‘Sharmila. Who is Sharmila?’ asked Rajesh.

‘She is a credit officer here,’ said Sharada and almost instantaneously Shanmuga also echoed, ‘she is a loan approving officer with you.’ Rajesh could be pardoned for not knowing any credit officer in the branch apart from Sharada.

‘Oh. OKAY.’

‘Sharmila had called me for some information on one of the customers who she said that I had sourced. I was surprised . . . because I had no idea who this customer was. I hadn’t put in these applications. I told her that and even came to your office and met her. On asking her for a list of customers against my name, she printed out a list of twenty-six customers whose applications were in process and I was baffled to see the list. Only four of them were applications that I had logged in. I had absolutely no clue about the others. Maybe it was a data entry error. I asked a few other sales executives in my team and no one knew these customers.’

‘So someone else is logging in files in your name. Why would they?’ asked Rajesh.

‘Sir, if they are against my name, tell me, shouldn’t I at least get incentives for them?’

‘You should,’ Rajesh nodded in acceptance.

‘So I went back and asked Murugan . . . ’

‘Who’s Murugan?’ Rajesh interrupted, his eyebrows knitting together to form a curling V.

‘Murugan is the proprietor of Insta-Money. He didn’t entertain me and refused to pay me any incentive for those loans. I let it be because in any case those were not my cases. However, during my next visit to NFS T-Nagar to login some other applications, I met Jugs sir. I thought I would try my luck and ask him.’

‘Did he help you?’

‘Not at all. When I told him the story and asked him to speak with Murugan, he got so furious . . . so furious that I really got scared.’

‘Why, what did he say?’

‘He said, “why should we pay you for customers who are walking into the branch” and walked away without holding any further conversation.’

‘What did he say? What did he say?’ Rajesh suddenly got interested.

‘He said, “Why should we pay you for customers who are walking into the branch?” And the next thing I know is that I have been terminated. I didn’t know what to do. I’ve not even got my salary. Please help me.’ Shanmugan looked genuinely distressed. His panda eyes showed thin red veins and revealed nights spent without sleep.

Rajesh was shocked. He was recording the entire conversation in the audio recorder of his cell phone. Once the conversation was through, he downloaded the conversation on his PC and sent the audio file as an attachment to Amit. Amit heard the entire conversation. He wasted no time and called Jugs immediately.

‘Jugs, what’s going on in Chennai?’

‘Means what?’ Jugs was arrogant.

‘What’s going on in Insta-Money?’

‘He is a DSA. Why? What’s the problem?’

‘Don’t be so naïve.’

‘You paid him 15 lakh of excess payout in the last few months . . . that too for loans he didn’t even source. What’s your cut?’

‘You are insinuating that I am hand-in-glove with the DSA? Are you suspecting my integrity? I don’t think I should be talking to you, if you don’t have any respect for people who have worked in this organisation for over a decade.’

‘Fuck off! Tell me the truth, you scoundrel, before I make life miserable for you.’

‘I am sorry. I refuse to carry on this conversation. If you have an issue, please speak with Gowri.’ Saying that, he banged the phone leaving Amit fuming.

By the time Amit walked into Gowri’s office, Gowri had been sufficiently briefed on this conversation by Jugs. Gowri looked at him, a smirk on his face. ‘What’s your problem man?’

‘Oh good. So I don’t need to repeat the story. Great. Now hear this.’ And he played the conversation with Shanmuga. Amit was carrying his own laptop with him and so it was easy for him to play the recording of the conversation Rajesh had with the sales executive.

‘What’s there in it to get so excited about?’

‘I will tell you. I never mentioned to Shanmuga that these were customers who walked in on their own. So he had no way of knowing that these were customers who walked into the bank. The incentive payout made to Shanmuga which we control, has been checked. Sharada has got the entire incentive payout details verified. Shanmuga has not been paid incentive for these loans. Which proves beyond doubt that these are not customers whose applications were brought in by Shanmuga.’

‘So?’

‘You heard the conversation. Shanmuga says that Jugs told him they will not pay any incentive for walk-in customers. How did Jugs at that time, when Shanmuga went to him, know that they were walk-in customers? Unless of course he himself was involved and knew about it before hand. You give me the answer to this question and I will go away.’ Gowri knew that Amit was right. It was clear to him that Jugs was fucking around in this case. But his heart was not willing to let go.

‘What do you want?’

‘I want permission to investigate on Jugs. A proper staff investigation. I suspect his integrity. He is on the take.’

When Gowri did not respond, he added, ‘A part of the 15 lakh that is being paid to the DSA every month is coming back to feed Jugs and I am sure of that.’ Amit was bang on. All customers who walked into the branch were to be serviced by the customer service officers in the branch. What Jugs was managing to do at T-Nagar branch was a big fraud. Jugs and Reuben were hand-in-glove. All customers who came to Reuben were being logged into their records as applications sourced by Insta-Money. Given that all applications from the DSA had to come in with the name of the sales executive, they had pulled out a name at random and that name was Shanmuga. All such applications were logged in under Shanmuga’s name. At the end of the month, Insta-Money would get paid for all loans done in this fashion. This amount for the last three months was over 15 lakh. Part of the amount was being paid back to Jugs and Reuben by the DSA. Clearly Jugs was siphoning off money in this manner. Gowri didn’t need to be too much of an expert to figure this out. He knew that Jugs was cornered.

‘I will speak with him.’

‘Not acceptable Gowri. If you don’t want an investigation, he has to resign today and must be relieved NOW.’ And after a pregnant pause added, ‘Else, I will escalate this request for an investigation.’ Amit then walked out. He felt victorious and he knew that he had cornered Gowri. If only there was some sazzy background music that could accompany him like the scenes in Bollywood movies, the picture would have been complete!

Jugs’ resignation was announced to a small group that evening in a cryptic message from Sangeeta. Word got around to Amit that the mission has been accomplished and he didn’t raise stink. He followed a bit with Rajesh to ensure that Insta-Money was also terminated as a DSA. Reuben didn’t attend office from that day onwards.

Gowri’s most trusted lieutenant had been sacked, and this was the second time something like this had happened. Earlier his aide in Raipur too had been sacked at Amit’s behest. Gowri was simmering, and dying to get back at Amit. Had Amit not gotten involved, he would have managed it. However, the entire issue got messy with his involvement. Somehow he had to get rid of that guy. Wasn’t he getting too powerful? Too big for his boots?

Apart from the irritant that Amit was proving to be, everything else was like a dream come true for Gowri. Business was beginning to rock. NFS was on an expansion spree. It was opening two new branches every week! By early 2007, Gowri had set up a distribution network of over 350 branches. He was the toast of the town.

His team was happy. When an organisation grows from 150 branches to 350 branches in 18 months, people are bound to be happy. It had only one meaning for everyone – career progression.

Young officers from existing branches were promoted to branch managers, and branch managers to regional managers. Pay hikes, promotions and parties were the order of the day. Even Sangeeta, who was good for nothing, got promoted to a senior vice president.

Business volumes were galloping. The company was doling out over Rs 200 crore of loans every month. In the global forum, it made Aditya look very good and he too was thrilled. At the New York Analysts forum the NFS branch expansion was a testimony to the groups commitment to an emerging market like India. It kind of worked for everyone. Almost everyone.

The unabashed growth was giving Amit sleepless nights. Many a time, at various forums he tried mentioning to Aditya and to Gowri that this growth would come at a cost and that when the repercussions hit, there will be blood on the streets. Aggressive growth in loans often come with back-ended losses. Revenue comes first and losses come thereafter. No one was willing to listen. The growth story that India was, camouflaged every single need to be cautious and ‘grow at any cost’ seemed to be the mantra, much to Amit’s displeasure.

‘There ain’t any coal in a gold mine, my friend. You are in a gold mine now, look for gold,’ Gowri had once told him. ‘If you are so scared, you should be somewhere else.’

To which Amit had retorted, ‘You are pissing on an electric fence, watch out!’

Amit was worried that this unabated growth in the lending business would boomerang one day. His view was that such growth would not be without its implications. It would come back to hit NFS in the form of high delinquencies and would ultimately impact their long term profitability. Whether it would or wouldn’t, only time would tell.

I
t was the fifteenth of December. Tulsiram was walking back slowly. His house was in the Indira Park area of Hyderabad – very close to the Tank bund and just overlooking the Marriott Hotel. Everyday the hotel bus would drop him back at the closest point accessible by road. But today was not one of those days.

On any normal day, his grind at the hotel was simple. He would accept the keys from anyone who drove in, give them a receipt of acceptance and say, ‘Thank you sir. Welcome to the Marriott’. He would then get into the car, admire its interiors for a few seconds and then drive on to the parking lot, with the keys to another car in his pocket. From the parking lot, he would drive back to the main porch in a different car, hand it over to a waiting customer, accept a meagre Rs 5 or 10 as a tip and then wait for the next car . . . or the next customer.

That day he had gotten off early from work. Even though the shift got over only at 10 p.m., he was off from work at 7 p.m. He was not keeping too well. The call from his wife earlier during the day had disturbed him. She had called him from a local phone booth. The news was not good.

He slowly walked, probably towards his house . . . it was more of a hutment. One could probably call it a high end slum. His legs felt like concrete. Every step seemed to need every ounce of energy left in his body. His steps were dragging, pulling him back. He did not want to go back home. What should he be doing? How could he manage what was expected of him? His thoughts went back to the youngest of his four children. She was just three months old. His wife had returned only the week before, from Narsapur where she had gone for her delivery . . . hoping that after three girls, the fourth one would be a boy. The baby turned out to be a girl. Luck deserted this time too . . . or so he felt.

It was getting shadowy. His pace was getting slower and slower. The road turned narrow and inched upward. It was becoming dark and the thorny bushes on the sides added to the bleakness of the night. The absence of the street lights made it a difficult terrain to manoeuvre. He pushed his way up the path. There was a huge mound of mud in front of him. Pausing for a moment he surveyed the road ahead of him. Fifty metres from where he was standing, the road turned into a muddy track. A deep breath later, he marched up the road, stopping intermittently to give his lungs some rest. His tired lungs forced him to stop to gather all the breath they needed . . . panting and making scary sounds . . . each breath reminding him in the bargain that he was a misfit.

‘It doesn’t matter,’ he said to himself as he stepped forward. Midway to the top, he stopped and sat down, clutching his head in his hands. His heart went out to his four daughters. He wiped the tears which had for a long time been trying to squeeze themselves out of his eyes.

The slippers came off, and he carefully placed them by the side. He got up and walked a few more feet. One could feel an unpleasant chill in the air. There was some water nearby. One could smell the dampness. He removed his trousers and shirt and walked a few more metres. The walk became even more slow. He wondered whether he was actually tired or was it fear . . . it could have been both. The path was now reduced to a small lane of mud in the midst of a thick overgrowth of bushes.

A few more steps and he stopped. He looked around. First to the right, and then in front of him. He strained his neck and looked behind to see if someone was following him. There was a thick growth of bushes to the left. A strange fear overtook him. There was a numb shiver in his body . . . probably the chill in the wind . . . probably not. He closed his eyes. Mumbled something that looked like a prayer, and then he let go. His body lunged forward, while his legs remained static. His body kept moving, using his toes to swivel till a point when his legs were lifted off the ground and they followed the head as it plunged deep down into the Hussain Sagar Lake. A splash killed the silence in the area. But there was no one around to get disturbed by it.

His body was found the next day by morning walkers, who called the local police and informed them about a body floating in the lake.

Tulsiram was dead by the time he was taken to the hospital. The police dismissed it as a regular suicide. When they checked with his colleagues at the Mariott, even they had no clue. Tulsiram had never shown his frustrations to them and so, they were not aware of what was going through his mind.

His wife was distraught. Four daughters and herself to manage. She had no clue about how she was going to survive. Tulsiram never told her about his problems. Was there something fishy? Was there a conspiracy she was not aware of? Questions after questions clouded her mind, but she did not have answers to any.

The next day in the morning, when one of her neighbours went to check on her, they were in for a rude shock. She was found lying on the mat, wrists slit. Next to her, lying on the floor, were her four daughters . . . dried froth stuck to the sides of their mouths. They were all dead. Tulsiram’s wife had killed all four of them before slitting her own wrists. Why she chose to poison them and take the difficult route of slitting her own wrists was a mystery to everyone in their neighbourhood. Limited supply of poison maybe?

The city police was shaken out of its slumber by these five suicides. The force which had refused to act when Tulsiram’s body was found floating in Hussain Sagar Lake, was now forced into action when faced with five more deaths. Public outrage at the loss of these six lives forced them to move out of slumber. They went into an overdrive.

Tulsiram’s house was sealed. The cops searched every nook and corner of his hutment. The search didn’t take too much time, because it was only a one room house. They couldn’t find anything that could throw light on the reasons for the suicide. Finally, a search of the Marriott’s driver room was undertaken. The lockers were sealed and searched.

And there it was. Inside Tulsiram’s locker, in a sealed cover was a two page note. It was in Telugu. The police could not read it properly as it was scribbled and the person seemed to have written the letter in an inebriated state. Experts looked at the letter and translated the same into English. The note was addressed to his wife.

That was it. Beginning of mayhem. All hell broke loose.

‘Mercenary Recovery Goons wipe out entire family’

This line screamed out loud from the front page of a mainline daily.

‘Who is to blame – Tulsiram or NFS recovery agents?’ said another. All these stories went on to blame the recovery agents for the deaths of Tulsiram and his family.

The story became the scoop of the year for the media. Overnight, Tulsiram became a rallying point for all the politicians. In his life he couldn’t become more than one poor nondescript soul. In his death he became a star. Newspaper after newspaper exploited this story. The television channels kept it alive. The media consistently portrayed Tulsiram as the poor exploited common man who was pushed into committing suicide by the loan brokers of the country. NFS figured prominently among them.

The opinion makers of the community started doing what they were good at – ‘Voicing their opinion’. In our country, if a rickshaw hits a motor car, the blame is almost always taken by the one driving the car, even if the rickshaw puller is in the wrong. It is quite easy to guess that in the battle between the affluent and the poor, who is to face the brunt. The same thing happened here as well. No one questioned why Tulsiram borrowed so much and lived beyond his means, why he gave birth to four children when he could not afford to bring up even one? Questions were only raised on the recovery means employed by banks and finance companies, specifically NFS to get back their legitimate dues.

Elections were due in the country in the next eighteen months – an election that would decide who gets to run the second largest democracy for the next five years. The elections always came with the potential to become a debacle of many sorts. Appeasement of masses is but natural at this time. If one tried putting his brains into the kind of statements that the political leaders made, one would be left with no doubt that our dearest ‘selfless’ politicians consider the janta to be nothing less than fools! Everything hinged on votes . . . and would the scheming politicians ever miss such a wonderful opportunity? They got active too. And unfortunately if the politicians get involved in anything in India, it becomes an unmitigated disaster. It only adds to the confusion and adds dollops to the already high frustration levels. One thing leads to another and everything collapses like a pack of cards. Disaster was lurking in the shadows. Could it be far behind?

Questions were raised in the assembly if the government was doing enough to protect the poor farmers, villagers and the low income group from the atrocities of recovery agents. It became a PR nightmare for the involved banks and finance companies. A tragic one off instance had turned into a big political agenda, a battle between the ‘Have’s’ and the ‘Have nots’. Not surprisingly, the political parties went all out to back the ‘Have nots’, a tried and tested vote bank politics strategy.

NFS was facing the brunt of this chaos. They became the poster boys for ruthless collections and were being solely held responsible for these mass suicides. Even though Tulsiram’s letter talked about loans from moneylenders and other financial institutions, NFS seemed to be the only one being singled out in this so-called democratic exercise of right to protest. Their branches in the city were shut down, security beefed up at all their branches to prevent loss to property and most of the employees were asked to stay at home to ensure their safety. Though it was shut down for business a few branches were kept open for the management team to visit and meet to work out damage containment strategy, albeit access was through a side door, away from public and media glare.

It was in the midst of this chaos that Amit landed in the city. When he had heard about the multiple suicides, he was shocked. An uneasy feeling kept lurking in the pit of his stomach. It felt as if something was taking somersaults inside and it just stopped short of making him throw up. It was not a good sign.

Why us? He thought even as he decided to be on site and marshal his resources himself. A senior management visit in such situations definitely props up the team at ground zero. Who knows what challenges they might be dealing with? He packed his bags and landed in Hyderabad. ‘I hope it ends well,’ he had mentioned to Chanda that day, before he left. The shiver in his voice was something Chanda had felt for the first time.

The plane landed at 7.55 a.m. He stepped out of the aircraft, walked to the luggage belt and waited patiently for fifteen minutes for the luggage to arrive. ‘Why can’t it come on time?’ he cursed under his breath, as he bent down to pull out the trolley. A few muscles in his back revolted, making him realise that he hadn’t been to the gym for quite a while.

His eyes scanned the endless list of taxi drivers to find a placard with his name. As he was looking around, someone thrust a pamphlet in his hand. It was about Hyderabad airport shifting to a new site in the next three months. ‘A larger and better airport, built to international standard and style,’ it said. ‘Who the fuck cares?’ he thought and threw it into the nearest bin.

There was only one thing on his mind. He wanted to be sure that in Tulsiram’s case, NFS came clean. He had done his research on the case and he was surprised at the allegation made by Tulsiram.

Back in Mumbai, when the Tulsiram case first blew up, the first thing he had asked for was Tulsiram’s loans statement of accounts. It clearly showed that Tulsiram was not a delinquent customer. He was up-to-date as far as his payments were concerned. In the books of NFS, there were no overdue payments from Tulsiram. Even though Tulsiram had bounced a few of his EMI repayments, he had paid up every single instalment on subsequent follow up by the NFS collection agencies.