A strong campaign by Moneylife through its website and its social media properties gets quick justice for a 79-year old man with an ailing wife. IndusInd Bank officials had deceitfully persuaded him break his fixed deposit with the bank and invest in a wrong product
 

Yesterday, there was another knock on 79-year old Mangelal Sharma’s door. Once again, the visitors were IndusInd Bank officials from his branch. But this time, it was not to mis-sell. The bankers came—at 11.30 in the night—bearing a demand draft of Rs7 lakh covering the amount he was persuaded to withdraw from his fixed deposit and invest in DWS’s mutual fund scheme with a 5-year lock in period.
 

The bankers also came with a letter wanting Mr Sharma to transfer the mutual fund units to the bank. This time, he was careful to read the letter and after some modifications, signed a release “without prejudice”. However, as he says, with great relief, “I want to close this chapter and move on”. We agree.
 

The bank’s rare capitulation, despite Banking Ombudsman dismissive attitude, was the result of Moneylife’s aggressive stance on mis-selling of banks, specifically making a campaign of this utterly disgusting case of mis-selling. In a first reaction to our report (Read Mr Sharma’s story here: ), the bank invited Mr Sharma to visit the bank at 10 am on Wednesday. Mr Sharma, wearing his T-shirt saying, “BEWARE IndusInd Bank is a cheat. It has cheated me and may cheat you too” landed up at the Preet Vihar branch in Delhi with Veeresh Malik, activist and Moneylife’s consulting editor in Delhi to lend him support.
 

But the bank had no intention of giving in so easily. It initially refused to allow Mr Malik to be a part of the meeting, did not want the conversation recorded and would not part with Mr Sharma’s documents or give him a copy of the cheque he had signed.
 

Readers may recall that bank officials visited Mr Sharma at his residence to persuade him to invest in what they said was a Development of Wealth Scheme (DWS), a branded fixed deposit of the bank, carrying higher returns. He was even persuaded to break an existing fixed deposit to put together Rs7 lakh for the investment. It is only when he received his first statement that he realized that he has been made to buy the DWS Hybrid Fixed Term Fund Series 10 Growth, which is sold by Deutsche Asset Management India Pvt Ltd (DWS) and has a 5-year lock in.
 

“Why would a 79 year old man, with a wife who needs surgery and who is living on his savings, willfully invest in a risky mutual fund with a 5-year lock-in”, asks Mr Sharma. But shockingly, the Reserve Bank of India’s (RBI) Ombudsman did not ask this basic question, or give him benefit of doubt and dismissed his complaint. Mr Sharma then decided to resort to Gandhigiri. Moneylife, which has been writing about gross mis-selling by banks, decided to campaign for him.
 

Mr Sharma’s fault was that he trusted the bankers of IndusInd Bank and allowed them to fill in the details of the scheme instead of checking the documents himself. The fact is, most people do trust their bankers implicitly and this has been ruthlessly exploited by modern day banksters to con persons who are not financially savvy. Senior citizens and women have been big targets of such systematic mis-selling. While Mr Sharma’s story has a happy ending, the rampant mis-selling of financial products remains a serious issue and Moneylife Foundation (our not-for-profit entity) will continue to push the RBI to rein in banksters, who exploit the trust of customers and sell them dubious derivative products, insurance or induce them to invest in portfolio management schemes which trade in risky commodity products.