HYDERABAD: A family in Miryalaguda lost 6 lakh tuition fees when they mistakenly sent it to a wrong US bank account over 2 months ago. Despite efforts, they’ve been unable to recover the funds from the bank.
Dongari Pavan, hailing from Miryalaguda in Nalgonda told TOI that his younger brother, Dongari Chakravarthi, was pursuing a Master’s degree in Advanced Data Analytics from the University of North Texas College in Denton, Texas, US. He joined the college last year. As he needed to pay the term fee for this year, the family sent $7,100 (5,99,174) to meet the requirement.
The money was sent on Aug 27 through an State Bank of India (SBI) wire transfer from the Miryalaguda branch to a bank in the US to pay for the tuition. But due to an error in the account number, the funds went to someone else’s account instead of Chakravarthi’s account.
“My parents are farmers. It was with great difficulty that we managed to secure a loan for the money needed to pay my brother’s fees,” Pavan said.
Chakravarthi reportedly approached the bank where his account was held to obtain details of the person whose account received the money by mistake. The bank refused to disclose any details about the account holder on grounds of privacy. Meanwhile, the university has been asking him to clear his fee dues.
Bank authorities in India too have not been able to help them recover the lost money. Pavan said he approached authorities at the Miryalaguda branch of SBI to help trace the account holder to whose account the money was credited, but the staff reportedly informed him that those details needed to be obtained from the beneficiary bank in the US. “Despite numerous attempts to get a resolution from the bank, we have not received any favourable response. The situation is stressful for us,” Pavan said.
Pavan had immediately brought the matter to the notice of SBI Miryalaguda on Aug 30 and also got an acknowledgement from it. “It has been 64 days since the problem arose. I have been appealing to the authorities of both the banks but we have not been able to get our money back,” he added.
In response to an ‘X’ post by Pavan about his problem, SBI, on Oct 5, advised him not to post banking or personal information publicly for security reasons.