Mumbai Court Sentences Two to Five Years for ₹68.22 Crore Fraud on Shinhan Bank

A metropolitan magistrate court in Mumbai has sentenced two individuals to five years in prison for defrauding Shinhan Bank to the tune of ₹68.22 crore. The verdict was delivered by Additional Chief Metropolitan Magistrate R.D. Chavan, who found Uttar Pradesh resident Raza Syed Nawaz Naqvi alias Santosh Kumar Prasad (38) and New Delhi resident Varun Rana alias Santosh kumar Prasad alias Jugendra Singh Mamraj Singh (41) guilty of the offence.

A third accused, Sumit Verma (32) from Himachal Pradesh, was acquitted due to lack of evidence. Two other accused — Anuj Kumar Chand alias Ratnesh and Sunita Hareram Devi — remain absconding.

The case was initially registered at the N.M. Joshi Marg Police Station and was later transferred to the Economic Offences Wing (EOW) on December 30, 2020, following a formal complaint by Shinhan Bank. Public Prosecutor Pravina Patil examined 22 witnesses, including bank officials and individuals whose identity documents were misused to open fake accounts.

According to the bank’s complaint, the fraud was executed through two companies — ID Technologies Pvt. Ltd. and Likas Tradex Pvt. Ltd. — which held accounts in the Mumbai and Delhi branches of the bank. Naqvi had posed as Santosh Kumar, the director of ID Technologies, while Rana impersonated Jugendra Singh, the director of Likas Tradex.

In November 2020, Shinhan Bank received a notice from the Cyber Cell of Odisha Police in connection with a chit fund scam. An internal probe that followed revealed that the documents submitted for account opening by both firms were forged. The bank also uncovered a pattern of high-value domestic transactions that did not align with the declared profiles of the companies.

Subsequently, the bank reported the findings to the Reserve Bank of India and Mumbai Police. The investigating agencies froze around 93 bank accounts that were allegedly used to deposit funds and transfer them to the accounts of the two fraudulent companies.