Dear Ms Sandhya Prajwal,
If the fund transfer took place to a wrong account, though inadvertently, then you say that you have "discussed" the matter with the bank authorities? However, in such cases, for the reversal of the funds, a letter from the MD on the letterhead of the company is required to be sent to the bank authorities. If sufficient funds are held in the recipient's account, then the bank authorities reverse the fund transfer immediately.
Anyway, now the bank has blocked the bank account. However, now send an official letter to them asking them to send an official letter to the recipient of the funds. He must refund the amount. Mere blocking the account is not sufficient. The action has to be backed by the official correspondence.
If the new employee has not received the salary because of the diversion of the funds to the wrong account, then your company should have paid him the salary anyway. Because of someone's wrongdoing, disbursement of salary to him cannot be held to ransom. If the salary is not disbursed, then do it immediately.
Your main query was on initiating disciplinary action against the HR Executive for doing the wrong fund transfer. However, here there appears to be a system's failure more than the person's failure. The cause of the incident is the lack of accuracy check on two counts. Firstly, whenever a new employee joins, and whenever the account details are uploaded to the bank account, why was the accuracy check not done? Secondly, for the disbursement of the salary, when the salary rolls were sent to the bank, why was the accuracy check of the new account holder not done?
This is an HR department's failure. For convenience, you cannot make the HR Executive scapegoat and cover up the matter. At the senior level, someone must take moral responsibility for what has happened.
Thanks,
Dinesh Divekar