Click to play videoNew Delhi: Just Rs 1,700 was enough to give Amit Kumar Kaushik, an Idea subscriber, sleepless nights.
Kaushik defaulted on a bill amount of Rs 1,700 in October 2008 and the recovery agents are now allegedly harassing him.
“They called to tell me they’ll get me bumped off. They trouble my wife and tell me I am a thief,” he says.
As banks across the country become desperate to recover mounting bad loans, harassment at the hands of recovery agents has seen a huge rise in the last few months.
Delhi police admit the scale is so huge that they have now set up two separate helplines just to deal with these complaints. Such cases will now be probed only by the crime branch.
“In the last three days we have received 66 complaints. Complaints involve banks and cellular operators and people are harassed in different ways,” says Satyendra Garg of the helpline.
Even telecom operators are giving defaulters a tough time. No matter what the amount is they are willing to use every trick in the book to get their money back.
Financial experts say private banks are feeling the pinch simply because of their aggressive lending policies.
Banking executive Arun Kaul says, “In times of a global economic slowdown the number of bad loans tend to rise very steeply because people no longer have the capacity to repay loans”.
Amit has forwarded his complaint to the Delhi police and hopes for some speedy action, something that this new service promises.
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