When attached to mortgage section in bank ... Hashini has allegedly pilfered gold jewellery and replaced them with imitation ones

When attached to mortgage section in bank ... Hashini has allegedly pilfered gold jewellery and replaced them with imitation ones

Present wife of accomplished singer Mr. Victor Ratnayaka, Hashini Ratnayaka had to be imprisoned yesterday as a result of a fraud committed during her tenure at Tangalla People's Bank.

During her service there at the bank she was posted to the pawn brokering department and what is stated in the complaint is that Hashini has robbed gold jewellery to the value of about Rs. 6,80,000

from a bank customer employed in Kuwait who had pawned those items and in addition gold jewellery to the tune of about Rs. 6 lakhs from another bank customer in Tangalla.

When inspecting the bank safe, it was revealed that the Kuwait lady's gold jewellery was found totally missing while imitation gold articles similar to the genuine jewellery deposited by the Tangalla customer were detected in the safe concerned. The police state that suspicions were aroused from CCTV evidence provided by the bank manager. It was after an investigation conducted subsequent to two complaints lodged with Tangalla Police in the year 2016 when the manager of the bank was called upon to provide this said evidence and the complaints had been made by the female who is engaged in the capacity of a house-maid and the other person. The 2 persons have pawned these gold articles in the year 2014.

The female serving in Kuwait had arrived in this country in 2016 on a holiday and had gone to the bank for the purpose of redeeming the gold articles pawned by her; and having realised that those were not available there, had then complained about it to police and later the bank too has lodged a complaint about the same incident to the police. When bank internal investigations were underway, it was reported that it was possible to recover gold-plated articles (instead of genuine gold items) worth around Rs. 6 lakhs that had been pawned by the other person.

The suspect was accused on offences of cheating while engaged in State service, misappropriation and breach of trust under the Act of Common Property and was produced before courts and remanded for a period of 1 week.