New Delhi:

Six companies that conducted the audit of New India Cooperative Bank from 2019 to 2024 have been summoned by the Economic Offences Wing (EOW), days after investigators found Rs 122 crore missing from the bank, sources said.

They said the EOW investigation is not linked to the controversy on social media surrounding actor Preity Zinta, after the Congress party’s Kerala unit in a post on X alleged she handed her social media accounts to the BJP and got a Rs 18 crore loan waiver from New India.

Ms Zinta has refuted the allegations.

The EOW is only looking into the case of the missing Rs 122 crore, sources said.

The summons to the six auditors are linked to the scam in which Rs 122 crore claimed to be kept inside the safes at the offices of the bank’s branches in Mumbai’s Prabhadevi and Goregaon were found missing.

The EOW said the cash storage capacity at the Prabhadevi and Goregaon vaults of New India was Rs 20 crore. New India on February 11 said its two safes had Rs 133 crore.

The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) found only Rs 11.13 crore when they counted the cash, leaving the rest Rs 122 crore missing.

The six auditors to whom summons have been sent are Sanjay Rane and Associates and his partner Abhijit Deshmukh, UG Devi and Co, Gandhi and Associates, Shinde Nayak Associates, Jain Tripathi and Co, and SI Mogul and Co.

Hitesh Mehta, the general manager and head of accounts of New India, has been named as the key accused in the scam. Another accused in the case is Dharmesh Paun.

The matter came to light after the bank’s new acting CEO Devarshi Ghosh filed a complaint against Mr Mehta and others in Mumbai for alleged misappropriation of the bank’s funds.

The RBI earlier this month superseded the cooperative bank’s board for a year and appointed the administrator to manage its affairs. A day prior to that, it imposed several restrictions on the lender, including on the withdrawal of funds by depositors, citing supervisory concerns and to protect the interest of its depositors.