Three Banks, Two Firms, ₹3.5 Cr Heist: How MP High Court Intervention Forced An FIR In Indore For A 30-Year-Old Mumbai Fraud

Acting on a strict mandate from the Madhya Pradesh High Court, the MG Road Police Station in Indore logged a FIR (number 0263) on Monday, reviving a complex corporate fraud and identity theft investigation that dates back to 1997. The formal police action marks a definitive breakthrough for the complainant, who spent 29 years battling institutional silence and tackling systemic roadblocks to hold a major banking institution accountable.

The intervention by Justice Subodh Abhyankar of the High Court Bench in Indore establishes a crucial legal precedent regarding territorial jurisdiction. Even though the actual forging of documents, clearing of cheques and siphoning of money occurred entirely within a bank branch in Mumbai, the high court directed the Indore Police to register and investigate the case.

This decision is important because the victim company, M/s Janak Intermediates Limited, maintained its corporate office at 505 MG Road in Indore and the financial injury and criminal deception directly impacted the company at its Indore headquarters, making the case maintainable there.

Details of the FIR

The newly registered FIR formally invokes six sections of the Indian Penal Code (IPC) of 1860 to investigate the conspiracy. The criminal case has been registered under Section 120-B for criminal conspiracy, Section 419 for cheating by personation and Section 420 for straight cheating involving dishonest inducement of property delivery.

To address the fabrication of corporate records, the police have also applied Section 467 for the forgery of a valuable security, Section 468 for committing forgery for the explicit purpose of cheating and Section 471 for knowingly using forged documents as genuine.

The formal complaint was initiated by Vishnu Kumar Bhaiya, a resident of 77 B Manishpuri Palasia in Indore and a former director of M/s Janak Intermediates Limited. The corporate entity, which originally operated its manufacturing unit at 1018-1019, Sector 3, Industrial Area Pithampur, District Dhar, Madhya Pradesh, was ordered to be wound up by the Madhya Pradesh High Court in 1996 under Company Petition Number 20/1996, placing it under the supervision of a provisional liquidator.

The newly filed FIR names "Unknown 1" alongside bank officials as the primary accused, with the corporate accountability shifting entirely onto HDFC Bank Limited, which inherited the legal liabilities of the branch through a series of historic bank mergers.

Discovery of fraudulent bank account

The roots of this decades-long dispute trace back to legitimate business transactions between the Indore-based M/s Janak Intermediates Limited and a debtor firm in Mumbai, M/s Mahanagar Engineering Private Limited, located at 7 Arcadia Building, 5th Floor, Nariman Point, Mumbai 400021.

Expecting a pending business payment of exactly Rs5,000,000, Bhaiya issued a formal legal notice to the debtor firm on April 3, 1998, after repeated letters yielded no results. The response from Mumbai, dated May 9, 1998, shocked the management. The debtor firm provided proof that they had already cleared the balance via three separate cheques drawn on the Bank of Baroda Reclamation Branch.

The tracking details revealed that these three cheques had been deposited and successfully cleared through a current account numbered 4001528 at the Bank of Punjab Limited, located in Bandra West, Mumbai. Bhaiya was stunned because Janak Intermediates Limited had never opened an account with the Bank of Punjab, nor had its board authorised any individual to establish a banking relationship with that financial institution.

Realising that a parallel corporate identity was being operated in Mumbai, Bhaiya began a decades-long campaign to uncover who was running the account.

Institutional stonewalling and mergers

Between July and September 1998, the actual management of Janak Intermediates Limited dispatched a sequence of urgent letters to the branch manager of the Bank of Punjab in Bandra, demanding a copy of the account opening form and the identity of the signatories.

The first warning letter was sent on July 14, 1998, followed by formal reminders on August 3, August 17, August 26 and September 1, 1998. The bank, however, engaged in a pattern of systematic delays. It took over two months for the bank to send a brief, two-line reply on September 16, 1998, merely asking the complainant to meet in person without providing any data.

This was followed by another letter on September 18, 1998, where the bank shifted the burden onto the complainant by questioning his own corporate authority to demand records.

Over the next several years, the bank continuously deflected requests by demanding external paperwork, such as search reports from the Registrar of Companies (ROC) in Gwalior and copies of the company's Memorandum of Association.

While the complainant complied with every document demand, including forwarding documents on December 8, 1998, and providing the latest ROC search report on February 22, 1999, the bank only provided a basic bank statement on March 16, 1999, and refused to show the original account setup files.

Follow-up reminders on March 30, April 19, June 7, 1999, and later on November 3 and November 7, 2005, went completely unanswered. During this prolonged delay, the corporate identity of the bank changed significantly.

The Bank of Punjab Limited initially merged into Centurion Bank of Punjab Limited, which subsequently merged into HDFC Bank Limited, leaving HDFC Bank's Bandra West branch as the ultimate custodian of the disputed records and liabilities.

Uncovering deceased identity theft and forgery

Frustrated by years of non-cooperation, Bhaiya escalated the matter to the Governor of the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) Central Office in Mumbai on November 16, 2011, following up with a reminder on January 27, 2012.

While the central bank confirmed that HDFC Bank possessed the photocopy of the account opening form, the original signature card with photographs of two investors, and a signed copy of the Memorandum and Articles of Association, the commercial bank still refused to hand them over to the victim despite a direct request dated May 3, 2012.

This forced Bhaiya to file his first major lawsuit, Writ Petition Number 9855 of 2012, in the Madhya Pradesh High Court. On September 10, 2013, the high court forced the bank to produce the confidential account opening documents directly in the courtroom exposing a massive coordinated forgery.

The paperwork revealed a shocking breach of foundational banking safety rules and absolute identity theft. The fraudsters had successfully opened the corporate account on March 4, 1997, by forging the signature and using a completely fake photograph of Ramniwas Bhaiya, the complainant's father.

Crucially, Ramniwas Bhaiya had resigned from the company on September 21, 1991, and had passed away on July 14, 1994, nearly three full years before the bank account was ever created. Furthermore, the signatures of another director, AK Jain, who had resigned from the company on October 4, 1993, were completely forged on the corporate constitution papers submitted to the bank.

Total breakdown of banking protocols

The documents extracted via the high court proved that the bank completely bypassed standard identity verification and Know Your Customer (KYC) protocols. The bank allowed a single, unauthorised individual to pose as a corporate leader and operate as the sole signatory without collecting mandatory statutory items.

The account opening file lacked a formal Board Resolution authorising the account, did not contain the necessary corporate common seal on any document, and completely omitted mandatory filings such as the official Certificate of Incorporation, Form 18 and the accompanying ROC registration receipts.

By bypassing these foundational checks, the bank permitted this single anonymous individual to systematically route a principal transaction sum of exactly Rs13,600,000 through the fraudulent account. Because this account was used to dishonestly misappropriate funds that rightfully belonged to the company, the complainant factored in a 6.25 per cent interest rate compounded over the years up to the date of the formal complaint.

Consequently, the total financial value of the siphoned funds, damages and accrued interest under dispute stands at Rs3,50,00,000.

Current path forward

Following the exposure of the forged documents in 2013, the complainant filed a subsequent petition, Writ Petition Number 2953 of 2015, which resulted in an order passed on March 11, 2026. This directive directly culminated in the formal registration of the complaint at the station entry under serial number 182 on April 17, 2026, leading directly to today's FIR registry.

The Indore Police has now integrated all past complaint records, statements and the forged bank exhibits directly into their active criminal registry. With the FIR fully active, the police will now demand the original physical signature cards and historical audit trails from HDFC Bank to identify the individual who physically walked into the Mumbai branch in 1997 to execute the theft, bringing a modern forensic focus to a crime that sat in the dark for nearly 30 years.

Published on: Monday, May 25, 2026, 04:41 PM IST