It wasn’t the first time Dinesh Bansal had stepped into a garage. He had grease in his veins — the kind of man who could hear a dent and tell you the damage.
But what most didn’t know was that he also had a taste for easy money. And one day, that taste turned into a plan.
“What if,” he said over a cup of tea in a dusty Faridabad workshop, “we could get the insurance company to pay for an accident… that never even happened?”
The man across the table, a seasoned insurance surveyor, raised an eyebrow. “You’re talking about a ₹3-4 lakh claim. You think they won’t notice?”
Bansal grinned slyly. “Not if someone inside approves it.”
And just like that, the wheels were set in motion.
Setting the Scene: From Garage Floors to Boardroom Floors
Between 2019 and 2021, Tata AIG was drained over time, not by cybercriminals, not by hackers, but by its people.
A group of insiders, external surveyors, and garage operators created a fraud web worth ₹30 crore. And the ringmaster?
A Class 10 dropout who ran auto workshops for a living.
It started small. A claim here, a small payout there.
But soon, they got ambitious. Fake accidents were staged. Airbags were reportedly deployed, even if the cars had never left the parking lot.
The Modus Operandi: Familiar Cars, Familiar Photos
One car reportedly met with three accidents in the same year, in three different locations, with the same damage and even the same photos.
“You’re telling me the bumper cracked the same way?” Virender Pal Singh, head of the fraud control team at Tata AIG, couldn’t believe his eyes when he spotted the pattern.
Photographs were recycled. Registration details were forged. Bills were inflated.
And the most alarming part?
“The same surveyor approved all of them,” Singh muttered, scanning the files.
“And guess who handled the internal review? Pradeep Rana — our guy,” replied his colleague, disgust evident in his tone.
Greasing the System: Bribes & Shell Companies
For every successful claim, 15% was passed under the table to Tata AIG’s officers, Pradeep Rana and Deepak Sharma, both now under arrest. Their job? Smoothen the process. Sign off. No questions asked.
Surveyors played their role too, nodding approvingly at damage that didn’t exist, writing reports that were works of fiction.
To manage the loot, Bansal set up eight shell firms, some in his wife’s name, some through accomplices. A local CA, roped in for a 10% cut, cleaned the money trail like clockwork.
The Fall: When Patterns Became Alarming
The fraud control team’s eyes were finally drawn to what didn’t add up: airbag replacements happening far too frequently, with the same brand of cars and garages involved.
A full-blown audit followed.
And then came the visit.
When cops finally picked up Bansal from Samaypur Badli Industrial Area, he reportedly chuckled and said, “Took you long enough.”
Why This Matters
This wasn’t just a scam — it was a reminder. A reminder that not every fraud is digital.
Sometimes, it’s old school. Fabricated bills. Staged photos. Friendly handshakes in parking lots. And people you trust.
It also raises bigger questions:
- How do multi-crore scams pass through so many levels unchecked?
- Why are insurance companies still reliant on manual approvals for high-ticket claims?
- And most importantly — how many more “Bansals” are still out there?
If this story teaches us anything, it’s that fraud doesn’t need a laptop or hacking software.
Sometimes, all it takes is a clipboard, a camera, and someone who knows the cracks in the system well enough to slip right through.
