Fake insurance menace goes unchecked in Mancherial
Mancherial: You may have heard of spurious cotton seeds, counterfeit currency notes and adulteration of popular brands of groceries. In the latest menace, selling fake insurance cover is going unchecked. Some unscrupulous persons are selling the fake insurance cover for heavy commercial transport carriers duping gullible owners of the vehicles and causing losses to the government in Mancherial district.
“A gang operating from Nizamabad is involved in the offence to make a fast buck. The gang members in Mancherial are charging 50 percent less than the cost charged by genuine insurance companies to sell insurance cover to owners of lorries. The innocent consumers are falling prey to this menace as they can get the coverage at considerably cheaper price,” a source told ‘Telangana Today.’
The owners of commercial transport vehicles would insure the vehicles to protect the carriers from road accidents. They can extend financial aid to the victims of road mishaps only if their vehicles are insured. The annual cost of the insurance charged by a company is around Rs 50,000. Some of the top players are Oriental Insurance, National Insurance, United India Insurance, HDFC ERGO General Insurance, Reliance General Insurance, SBI General Insurance, and The New India Assurance,
Some persons who are acquainted with the insurance sector are able to sell the fake insurance cover to the owners of lorries for somewhere between Rs 20,000 and Rs 35,000. They are issuing bonds of coverage with stamps of invalid addresses of the companies and toll free numbers. But the numbers are not reachable. Surprisingly, a number has 11 digits. “The toll free numbers of the genuine insurance companies can always be contacted,” the source informed.
Owners of single vehicles are reportedly buying the insurance cover as they could not afford to pay Rs 50,000. Officials of the Road Transport Authority (RTA), who can detect the offence at the time of examining fitness of the lorries, are alleged to have colluded with the members of gang by accepting bribes. Certain members of Lorry Owners Association of Srirampur, Mancherial, Mandamarri and Bellampalli towns have a hand in glove with the gang.
Owners bear brunt of fake insurance
The owners cannot provide compensation to the kin of victims of road accidents if a customer buys a dummy insurance policy. Due to the menace, the government would lose 18 percent of Goods and Service Tax levied on the insurance cover. An owner of the lorry from Mancherial was imposed a fine of Rs 1.12 crore by a court for buying the fake cover a few months back.
Over 1,000 lorries in Mancherial
Mancherial district has somewhere between 1,000 and 1,500 lorries. Anywhere between 20 and 40 percent of owners buy these fake insurance policies. Around 200 agents of various registered insurance companies render the service in the district. Some of them were shocked to find the documents of these fake insurance firms recently. They realized the menace when they registered a drastic dip in annual sales of insurance coverage.
