Old woman walked barefoot to collect pension from SBI; Sitharaman pulls up bank

In the viral video, the 70-year-old woman can be seen walking barefoot amid heatwave in Odisha with the support of a broken chair to collect her pension from State Bank of India.

In a video that has now gone viral on social media a 70-year-old woman was seen walking barefoot amid heatwave in Odisha with the support of a broken chair to collect her pension from State Bank of India (SBI). But she was forced to return home as her thumb impressions didn’t match with the banks records.

Sharing the video on Twitter, Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman pulled up SBI for the plight of the woman.

The incident happened in the Jharigaon block of Nabrangpur district of Odisha on April 17.

The elderly woman in the video has been identified as Surya Harijan. Her older son is a migrant labourer in a different State. She stays with her younger son who grazes other people’s cattle for living. The family has no land to plough and lives in a hut, according to ANI

Reacting to the incident, the SBI manager claimed that the woman faced trouble with withdrawing money because of her “broken fingers” and the bank was working to resolve the problem.

“Her fingers are broken, so she is facing trouble withdrawing money. She has been given ₹3,000 manually from the bank. We will resolve the problem soon,” the SBI manager of the Jharigaon branch said.

The Sarpanch of her village also said that they have discussed listing such helpless people in the village and providing pension money to them.