New Delhi, February 21: Unlike diamond merchant Nirav Modi, who is at the centre of Punjab National Bank's Rs 11,500-crore banking fraud, the PNB- India's second-biggest state-run lender had some loyal customers in the past. Amid escalating tensions over the recent fraud, there are also stories of repayment of loan posthumously. The loyalty refers to a loan story of Former Prime Minister Lal Bahadur Shastri-who had taken a loan of Rs 5,000 from the same PNB bank which is facing a tough time past one week.

Reports state that the car loan amount of Rs 5,000 taken by former Prime Minister was repaid by his widow wife Lalita from her pension, following years of his death in Tashkent. The FIAT car still stands at his home, reminding of the era of a different breed of men.

In the last week, the Punjab National Bank (PNB) stunned India’s banking sector by announcing that it had discovered fraudulent transactions worth $1.77 billion (Rs 11,400-crore)at a single branch in Mumbai.  As per reports by TOI, Shastri's son and former Union Minister Anil Kumar Shastri said, "We went to St Columba's School on a tonga. Once in a while we used the office car but my father did not allow us to use it regularly for any kind of private work. There was a demand at home that we should buy a car”.

Recalling the instance, Shastri's son said that his father the then PM told his secretary to find out the price of a Fiat car in the year 1965. As per reports, the price was found to be Rs 12,000 but Shastri had only Rs 7,000 in the bank. He then applied to PNB bank for a loan of Rs 5,000, which was sanctioned in less than two hours. Anil Shastri recalled the incident saying that his father- who was the Prime Minister then, promptly summoned the bank officer who had sanctioned the loan to his office to inquire if the bank was equally prompt in sanctioning loans to other people.  But soon after Shastri’s death on January 11, 1966 in Tashkent, the loan remained unpaid. “It was repaid by my mother from the pension she received after my father's death," says Anil.

The Nirav-Modi led PNB Fraud is considered to be the biggest ever detected by an Indian bank where lenders -especially the state-run banks are hobbled by $147 billion in soured loans on their books, a problem that has choked new lending and hurt the country’s economic recovery. Nirav Modi, in his letter to PNB on Tuesday, blamed the bank and said that Punjab National Bank’s overzealousness has shut the doors on his ability to clear the dues, which he claimed were much lower than the amount stated by the bank.

(The above story first appeared on LatestLY on Feb 21, 2018 05:46 PM IST. For more news and updates on politics, world, sports, entertainment and lifestyle, log on to our website latestly.com).