Teacher Discovers $9.8B Bank Balance

(Facebook)

A man in West Bengal, India, had expected to find a balance of $200 during a recent visit to an ATM but instead found 490 billion rupees, or $9.8 billion, in his account.

Parijat Saha, a schoolteacher in Balurghat, earns a salary of 35,000 rupees, or $700, a month,  the BBC reported.

"I called up a friend in the bank and joked, maybe money is overflowing in your bank, that's why your system has remitted so much money into my account," Saha, shown above in a Facebook photo, told the BBC.

Saha had called the State Bank of India, where he keeps his account, to inform it of the error.

The $9.8 billion was "uncleared" by the bank, the BBC reported, so he couldn't have withdrawn it even if he'd tried. State Bank's motto on its website is "The Nation banks on us …"

"Even though I got my [own] money back, the account still holds the billions of dollars as an uncleared amount," he said. "I don't know how long I'll have to keep that astronomical figure in my account."

Subhashish Karmakar, chief manager of the bank's branch in Balurghat, declined to comment to the BBC.

"I have been specifically asked not to comment on this issue," he told the BBC.