A Swindle At LIC

Hundreds of people lose their investment in LIC scam in Kolkata.

- Rabi Banerjee

When the daughter of Bani Prasad Nandimajumdar , an engineer-turned businessman from Kolkata, got married and moved to the US with her husband a decade ago, she gifted her savings worth ₹10 lakh to her father, who ran a small factory in the city. In 2010, Nandimajumdar, 70, invested the money in an LIC (Life Insurance Corporation of India) policy; he paid the premium through an insurance agent and received the receipt and the policy bond. Soon, he started receiving a quarterly pension of ₹24,000. But, it stopped in September 2013.

“When I visited the LIC’s eastern regional headquarters in Kolkata, they refused to give me any clarification,” said Nandimajumdar. He then wrote to LIC chairman S.K. Roy, who asked the divisional manager in Kolkata to handle the complaint. The DM informed Nandimajumdar that there were some mistakes in the accounts at the LIC’s main office in Kolkata and promised to give him further details soon. When no further intimation came, Nandimajumdar approached the consumer court in September 2015.

“That offended them, so they decided to hit back,” he said. In court, the LIC’s lawyer demanded an inquiry about Nandimajumdar’s source of income. “They perhaps thought I was a corrupt businessman who would withdraw the case out of fear,” he said. The case is pending.

A few days after going to court, Nandimajumdar realised that there were 282 others like him in Kolkata. They had deposited more than ₹50 crore in premiums, with their insurance amount running into more than ₹200 crore. Their premiums have been rejected and annuities and maturity sums withheld without notice. A preliminary CBI investigation found that almost ₹5 crore had been siphoned off by certain LIC employees, the alleged mastermind being Debabrata Ray, who was an assistant branch manager at the regional office in Kolkata.