You can no longer blindly trust your bank ATM as a DNA staffer learnt to his utter shock when a machine presented him with a counterfeit 1,000-rupee note. The ATM belonged to a large reputed private bank that has its presence in 780 Indian towns and cities.
On Thursday, he punched his PIN into the ATM placed on the bank premises in RT Nagar and withdrew Rs5,000. Having got a denomination of four 1,000-rupee notes and ten 100-rupee notes, he deposited the money in his wife’s account at the Shivajinagar branch of a nationalised bank within 20 minutes.
But the cashier rejected one Rs1,000 note after checking the wad on a note sorting machine. The note bore No. 6CH 686744 and had the signature of RBI governor YV Reddy.
The clerk pointed out that she considered the note as fake as the watermark digits did not glow and the vertical watermark showed two red glows on its security thread instead of all glowing green as on a genuine one. The left margin on the note, too, was a couple of millimetres narrower.
When the fake note was taken back to the bank owning the ATM, the manager promptly queried: “How do I know you got this note from our ATM?” But when the withdrawal slip was produced, the manager buzzed his senior who advised him to note a complaint and take a photocopy of the note. The manager, after checking it on the machine, agreed it was an “odd note” and noted a complaint, adding that management of the ATM was outsourced and the agency could not be contacted.
A series of telephone calls followed from various bank officials, including the top corporate communication official in Mumbai. But explanations like “We will inquire into it”; “Millions of notes are fed into the machines and it is not possible to record the serial number of every note”; “This occurrence is very, very rare”; “It may not be a fake note as RBI keeps changing designs and it could be one of the old designs” were given.
At the end of the day, seemingly tired of their own babble, they sent the bank manager with a genuine note and took away the fake one.
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