Bank recovery agent threatens Versova resident who never even applied for a loan
Farooq Merchant/Twitter
A 45-year-old spa owner filed a complaint earlier this week against a bank recovery agent who would repeatedly call and harass him over the repayment of a loan he didn’t take.
The victim, Farooq Merchant, started receiving calls from an ICICI recovery agent named Shetty around first week of June. The agent informed him that his sister had taken a loan of Rs 2 lakh from the bank and failed to repay it.
The Yari Road resident assured him that he had no clue about such loan and couldn’t help him in any way since he hadn’t spoken to his sister in two decades.
Moreover, since he wasn’t a guarantor, he wasn’t even obliged to answer for the loan.
But, the agent refused to budge. Over the next two weeks, he would continue calling Merchant and abuse him on call. When his calls were not answered, he would call the landline number of Merchant-owned Bamboo Tree Spa.
Despite the harassment, Merchant continued to ignore Shetty’s calls. In desperation, the agent then started targeting his friends. But, things reached a tipping point after Shetty claimed that he knew about Merchant’s daughter and can leverage her to recover the money.
Fearing for his daughter’s safety, the victim approached Versova police. Cops registered a non-cognisable (NC) offence against Shetty and warned him not to trouble Merchant again. The victim also reached out to ICICI bank via social media, who assured him that he will receive no such calls henceforth.
But to his surprise, Shetty called him again, claiming he didn’t care for police complaints.
He also threatened to file a fake complaint against Merchant for running a prostitution racket from his spa.
Merchant approached Khar police once again and filed another complaint against him. Meanwhile, ICICI spokesperson has confirmed that the agent was violating their code of conduct and has since then been terminated.
Merchant’s tweet to ICICI bank:
@ICICIBank #hencemen giving #threatning call 4 no #loan or any dues against me.Threaten 2 harm my fly @MumbaiPolice pic.twitter.com/tEvGqBz1la
— Farooq Merchant (@merchantfarooq) June 17, 2016
