‘Software error’ credits ₹964cr to two Katihar kids’ accounts

‘Software error’ credits ₹964cr to two Katihar kids’ accounts

Sanjeev Mishra@timesgroup.com

Katihar:17.09.2021

Two Class 6 students of a government school in Bihar's Katihar briefly had more millions in the bank than what their multiplication skills would have enabled them to calculate, courtesy a supposedly “software error” that credited Rs 902 crore and Rs 62 crore to their respective accounts.

Gurucharan Biswas and Ashish Kumar’s short-lived windfall was “rectified immediately” after Uttar Bihar Gramin Bank realised what had happened, district magistrate Udayan Mishra said on Thursday even as the two students recounted their fleeting tryst with crores of rupees they never got to spend.

On Tuesday, one Ranjit Das of Khagaria had been arrested for allegedly refusing to return a portion of the Rs 5.5 lakh wrongly credited to his account with the same bank in March last year. He told the police that he thought the money was part of a direct benefit transfer promised by PM Modi. In Katihar, both students received the mistakenly credited amounts in their accounts on Wednesday. They both study in a government school at Pastiya village of Azamnagar block.

"Due to a banking software error, one account was showing an inflated amount. In another instance, the amount appeared only in the printout of a receipt," the district magistrate said.

Lalan Biswas, mukhiya of Pastiya village, said, "Children receive money in their bank accounts every month to buy uniforms and books. When one of our students checked his balance on Thursday, he was surprised to see the amount. Another student did the same and he was in for a surprise, too."

When the students tried to withdraw some money, they realised that the "credits" were notional, Biswas said.