Published on Wednesday,
October 03, 2007 at 08:05 in Money section
New Delhi: Standing
tall at 5 ft 11 inches, Lucky is a daunting and an
imposing sight on the streets of Delhi. This
38-year-old has just started a detective agency of
his own, but that's only a front for his real job.
Lucky is a recovery agent. Big private
banks hire him to make sure their loans are returned
on time. Eighteen years in the business and he knows
exactly how to get customers to pay up.
“We threaten people, we land up at
their place and sometimes even use third
degree,” he admits to CNN-IBN.
Welcome to the world of corporate
sponsored violence, a dark underbelly of the swanky
banking sector where local goons and ruffians are
hired by banks to terrorise customers into settling
their dues.
Where threatening calls, verbal abuse
and even physical violence have become part of
routine collection system.
These recovery agents are not on any
bank's rolls but stand to get a hefty cut of booty
they help recover.
“Not just lathis, some
agents even pull out their mousers, they stop cars on
gunpoint, drag the owners and drive away with the
car,” Lucky says.
Sixty-year-old Surinder Kumar runs a
consultancy in west Delhi. Two months ago, he fell
victim to recovery sharks when one of his employees
defaulted on his Rs-50,000 credit card payment to
HDFC bank.
“He abused, used filthy language
and threatened us. They said our kid has been picked
up. We were very scared. I wondered if we should stop
sending him to school,” he recalls.
Surinder is just one of thousands of
people who've seen the ugly side of loan recovery
process.
Blame it on over-aspiring consumers who
borrow more than they can return or overzealous
lenders who then bend the rules to recover their
debts, the paranoia continues.
This corporate tactic has also turned
deadly with a spate of suicides. Two weeks ago
Prakash Sarvankar of Mumbai, harassed by ICICI banks
recovery agents, was forced into taking the extreme
step.
For the likes of Lucky and others in his
league, it’s just another job. “I feel bad
about my job. But if I don't do it, someone else
will,” he says.
Gandhi may be stamped on the currency
banks lend, but there's nothing Gandhian about the
way they go about recovering it.
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