PNB suspends 12 employees after ₹11.24 crore vanish from customers' accounts: What happened at Greater Noida branch?
Punjab National Bank (PNB) has suspended 12 employees and approached the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) after customers at its Greater Noida branch reported money missing from their savings accounts and fixed deposits. The bank suspects that a female employee, allegedly working with outsiders, used the branch manager's password to transfer money from customers' accounts without their knowledge.
PNB's preliminary assessment puts the amount transferred out of customers' accounts at less than ₹10 crore. However, complaints filed by account holders have identified alleged losses exceeding ₹11.24 crore, while some customers have estimated the total amount involved at nearly ₹35 crore.
The suspensions at Punjab National Bank follow allegations that a female staff member at the Greater Noida branch misused the passwords of other employees, including the branch manager, to carry out unauthorised transactions.
According to a senior PNB official quoted by The Economic Times, the Greater Noida branch employee worked with outsiders to access the branch manager's password and transfer money from individual customer accounts.
PNB has suspended everyone suspected of being involved, including the branch manager, while it investigates the incident. The bank has also taken the matter to the CBI for further investigation.
Several PNB customers have alleged that substantial amounts disappeared from their savings accounts and fixed deposits without their knowledge or authorisation. Some account holders have also raised concerns about not receiving SMS alerts for the disputed transactions.
The complaint identifies alleged losses exceeding ₹11.24 crore across 21 individuals. Two customers have reported losses of more than ₹1 crore each.
Shrichand, a resident of Surajpur in Greater Noida, alleged that ₹1.16 crore was misappropriated from his fixed deposit. Another customer, Bijendra Singh, claimed that his savings account balance had fallen from approximately ₹87-88 lakh to just ₹1 lakh.
Haneep Khan alleged that nearly ₹39 lakh had gone missing from his account, while another account holder, Zakir, claimed that ₹9.5 lakh had been withdrawn without authorisation.
Some customers have put the estimated losses at around ₹35 crore, claiming that savings accounts, fixed deposits and mutual fund investments may have been affected.
Livemint could not independently establish these figures.
An FIR has been registered against unidentified bank employees under Section 316(5) of the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita (BNS), which deals with criminal breach of trust. The case follows a complaint filed by Shrichand and other affected account holders.
PNB has said it is examining customer complaints on priority and cooperating with the authorities. In a statement reported by PTI, the bank confirmed that it had settled three claims amounting to ₹43 lakh.
"The Bank assures its customers that all genuine claims will be honoured," PNB said.
The bank said it would take strict action against anyone found responsible and was taking steps to ensure such an incident does not happen again.
The alleged irregularities have been reported at a PNB branch in Greater Noida, Gautam Buddh Nagar district, Uttar Pradesh.
Lead District Manager Ram Vinod Kumar said action was being taken and the grievances raised by customers were being examined. Police have also confirmed that the bank management has assured account holders that their complaints will be addressed.
PNB is yet to establish the final amount involved in the alleged fraud. The investigation and verification of customer claims are ongoing.
Sayantani Biswas is an assistant editor at Livemint with seven years of experience covering geopolitics, foreign policy, international relations and global power dynamics. She reports on Indian and international politics, including elections worldwide, and specialises in historically grounded analysis of contemporary conflicts and state decisions. She joined Mint in 2021, after covering politics at publications including The Telegraph. <br> She holds an MPhil in Comparative Literature from Jadavpur University (2019), with a specialisation in postcolonial Latin American literature. Her research examined economic nationalism through Eduardo Galeano’s Open Veins of Latin America. She also writes on political language, cultural memory and the long shadows of conflict. <br> Biswas grew up in Durgapur, an industrial town in West Bengal shaped by migration, which drew families from across India to the Durgapur Steel Plant. As the only child in a joint family, she spent years listening—almost obsessively—to her grandparents’ testimonies of struggle, fear and loss as they fled Bangladesh during the Partition of 1947. This formative exposure to lived historical memory later converged with her training in Comparative Literature, equipping her to analyse socio-economic structures and their reverberations. <br> Outside the newsroom, she gravitates towards cultural history and critical theory, returning often to texts such as Paulo Freire’s Pedagogy of the Oppressed. As a journalist, she is committed to accuracy, intellectual rigour and fairness, and believes political reporting demands not only clarity and speed, but historical depth, contextual precision, and a disciplined resistance to spectacle.
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