“He Died 11 Years Ago. So How Did He Sign a Loan Application in 2022?”
That’s what Reena kept asking herself as she clutched the file handed to her by the bank manager. The photo on the loan document? Her late husband. The signature?
A near-perfect match. But the dates, they didn’t lie.
“My husband passed away in 2012,” she told the stunned officials at the bank branch in Delhi. “How could he have mortgaged this property and taken a ₹3.2 crore loan just two years ago?”
The silence that followed wasn’t just awkward, it was incriminating.
The Loan That Should Never Have Happened
According to the bank’s paperwork, the man claiming to be Reena’s husband had approached them in 2022.
He applied for a loan worth ₹3.2 crore, offering up a property in Acharya Puri, Sector 12, Gurugram, as collateral.
Not just that, the address listed in the documents stated that the borrower actually lived on that very plot.
On the surface, everything checked out. The bank had no reason to be suspicious. The ID proofs were clean, the sale deeds polished, and the ownership records impeccable.
The loan was sanctioned without much fuss. Monthly EMI? ₹91,806.
Business as usual, until Reena walked in.
“This Property Wasn’t Even His to Begin With”
What struck Reena as strange was how the bank even considered her husband a valid applicant, years after his death. But when she started flipping through the file, things became clearer… and more disturbing.
It wasn’t just about the name and photo. The documents had been painstakingly forged to make it seem like her husband had transferred the property, processed the paperwork, and taken the loan, all from the afterlife.
“The property was part of a joint family holding,” she said. “No one had sold it. There was no discussion, no paperwork, no consent. And yet here it is, mortgaged to a bank by someone dead over a decade.”
That’s when the bank knew it wasn’t just an internal error. They’d been scammed.
Enter Suresh Kumar — The Man Behind the Mask
This wasn’t a family feud or an inheritance dispute. This was a full-blown, calculated fraud carried out by someone who knew exactly what he was doing: Suresh Kumar.
The Delhi Police soon picked up Suresh, and the truth began to tumble out. He wasn’t new to this game. He was practically a veteran.
The man had 18 cases registered against him, 13 of them under the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI), and 5 under Delhi’s Economic Offences Wing (EOW).
For years, he had been operating in the grey zone of document forgery and loan fraud.
During interrogation, Suresh confessed without much resistance.
He spoke about fake sale deeds, forged e-stamp papers, counterfeit rubber stamps, even fabricated ID cards and utility bills.
His scam wasn’t random. It was a system. One that had worked multiple times before.
A Forgery So Clean, Even the System Believed It
This is where the story gets both impressive and terrifying.
Suresh didn’t simply forge a signature. He built a story, from property records to identification, to proof of residence.
The fraudster also made sure every document looked legitimate.
He knew the kind of paperwork banks trusted and exactly how much scrutiny was “too much.”
And perhaps, more importantly, he knew what banks didn’t check.
The bank trusted the papers, the property was mortgaged, and the loan got approved. As long as the EMI came in, there was no reason for anyone to raise eyebrows.
But like all scams, the cracks began to show. The repayments stopped. And that’s when Reena, unknowingly, became the whistleblower.
Suresh’s Underground Operation
Digging deeper, police found that Suresh wasn’t just a one-time fraudster. He was a known name in certain circles, a man who could help get loans for “clients” who had neither eligibility nor collateral.
He would create everything from scratch, sometimes even the properties themselves were fictitious on paper.
All he needed was a gullible customer (or one who didn’t ask questions), and he would arrange the rest: ownership papers, government seals, even digital footprints.
According to SHO Satish Kumar, Suresh had managed to stay under the radar for a long time by constantly shifting identities and staying behind the scenes while his “clients” applied for loans using the forged documents he created.
But this time, he crossed a line; he used the identity of someone who was no longer alive. And that’s where it all began to unravel.
How Did No One Catch This Earlier?
It’s the question everyone keeps asking: How did a bank, with multiple layers of verification, hand over ₹3.2 crore to someone impersonating a dead man?
The answer is bitter but simple: they trusted the documents.
Suresh didn’t hack any systems. He didn’t bribe anyone. He just figured out how to play the system as it was.
A paper trail that looked clean, paired with a borrower who answered confidently, was often enough to get past surface-level scrutiny.
This case exposes a chilling truth: our systems are still designed to trust paper more than people.
And when fraudsters know that, they don’t need to hide. They just need a printer and a plan.
What This Scam Tells Us About the Bigger Picture
Reena’s courage brought this scam to light, but it leaves behind a worrying question: how many more loans are sitting in the books of banks, based on equally fake identities?
With someone like Suresh behind the wheel, anything seems possible. The man wasn’t just a fraud, he was a system in himself. And the most terrifying part is that it worked.
This case isn’t just about one ₹3.2 crore loan. It’s a wake-up call to rethink how institutions verify ownership, identity, and intent, not just on paper, but in reality.
Final Thought
Suresh may now be in police custody, but the real danger still lurks in the loopholes he exploited.
For every Reena who speaks up, how many others are still in the dark, unaware that their names, their properties, even their deceased family members, are being used for scams?
Because if a dead man can secure a ₹3.2 crore loan in the heart of Delhi… what else is possible?
