Chandigarh, Nov. 23 -- The Punjab and Haryana high court has granted bail to a bank employee arrested by Mohali police on allegations of helping an accused in a digital arrest case cheat a Mohali woman. The petitioner employee, Shaik Noushad Ahammed, worked as relationship manager with a bank. The allegations were that he had facilitated opening of the account in which Rs.57 lakh out of the cheated amount of Rs.1.03 crore was deposited and later withdrawn. The FIR was registered in June 2025 in which a Mohali woman had alleged that she was present in her house when she received a Whatsapp call from an unknown number. The person on the other end, claimed to be a cop from Maharashtra and accused the victim of having fake accounts. He further told her that an FIR had been registered against her and that she will be arrested. Later, some more persons connected with her through calls and threatened her. On the pretext of verification of her accounts, they gathered more details and forced her to transfer Rs.57 lakh into a bank account initially and subsequently Rs.1.03 crore on different dates. The petitioner claimed he was appointed as a relationship manager and only facilitated opening of an account on submission of the documents. The verification of the documents submitted by a person for seeking opening of the account is to be done via the back entry and not by the petitioner, his counsel, Harsh Chopra had argued. The respondent on the other hand had claimed that the petitioner is accused of helping a person in opening the fake account of one Mohammad Pasha, who is a fictitious person without verification of the documents. However, police failed to counter the argument that whether any standard operating procedure was in place as per which the verification of the KYC documents was to be undertaken by the petitioner. Taking note of the submissions, the court granted bail observing that " (bail is being granted in view of) the clean antecedents of the petitioner, absence of recovery, the arguable issues with respect to the role and responsibility of the petitioner as also the fact that further custodial detention of the petitioner is not warranted for investigation of the present case," the court said granting him the bail....