ICICI pays Rs 15.5 lakh to dead debtor's kin

The ICICI Bank on Thursday paid Rs 15.5 lakh to the next of kin of a debtor whose suicide due to coercive tactics used by the bank's loan recovery agents sparked a national outcry.

Prakash Sarwankar (38), a resident of Andheri, ended his life at his residence on September 17 after the visit of some recovery agents to his place, police had said.

Four recovery agents of ICICI Bank, Nishant Nagrale (29), Hiren Vaidya (25), Kailash Choudhary (27) and Tushar Pargaonkar (27) were arrested on charges of suicide abetment.

"ICICI Bank condoles the untimely and unfortunate death of Mr Prakash Sarwankar and joins his family in their hour of grief. Without any prejudice towards the outcome of the case, ICICI Bank has made an ex-gratia payment of Rs 15.50 lakh (Rs 1.55 million)

to the family," a bank statement said.

Sarwankar, who is survived by his wife and three daughters, was unemployed and had taken a loan of Rs 50,000 from the private bank. His wife works as a guard in a private security firm.

He had left a suicide note saying he was ending his life due to the harassment by the bank's recovery agents.

Following the incident, Maharashtra Deputy Chief Minister R R Patil had asked the police to investigate all the cases of use of coercive tactics by banks to recover dues. The police have said they will direct lenders to employ "desirable" people to collect loan dues for preventing such cases.