Karnataka high court refuses to quash FIR in fake SBI loan scam case

Bengaluru: The Karnataka high court refused to quash a cheating and cybercrime FIR and related proceedings against four persons accused of duping a businessman by allegedly creating a fake State Bank of India website, hacking the actual bank website, and obtaining OTPs. "The case at hand is akin to a crime thriller or a crime potboiler," Justice M Nagaprasanna noted in his order.Vinayak Kabadi, a businessman from Gadag, was the complainant. K Balajee alias Balaji Sha; Silmia alias Silmya Fathima, both from Tamil Nadu; Seba Jeevan Sebaratnam, a resident of Carshalton, Surrey, UK, but currently residing in Bengaluru; along with Vinay Kumar Agarwal, Bengaluru, challenged the FIR and proceedings initiated by Bengaluru police.
The complainant was looking to raise loans to establish a sugar factory. In Oct 2017, he visited Celestial Tiles showroom at Indiranagar, Bengaluru, owned by Vinay Agarwal. Vinay and Silmia's husband Niyaz assured him they would arrange a loan of Rs 225 crore and asked him to come to Chennai to meet SBI officials at Park Hyatt Hotel.Niyaz and Silmia introduced the businessman to the other accused. They lured him with promise of Rs 225-crore loan and demanded a commission of 7% of the loan amount. The complainant agreed, and documents were transmitted to the accused. In furtherance of the said transaction, one email was communicated to the complainant, and Rs 49 lakh was credited to his account that was opened in State Bank of India on Jan 4, 2018. Another email transaction alert came from the website of sbicf.co.in informing that Rs 115 crore was credited, and again Rs 110 crore was shown as credited to the account of the complainant. The total available balance showed Rs 225,49,00,000.The complainant then paid about Rs 7.2 crore, which was 50% of the commission amount. He then checked the account in the State Bank of India physically and on learning that he was duped, he filed a complaint on July 16, 2022.Challenging the registration of crime and proceedings initiated against them, the accused argued that the issue on hand was purely civil in nature. They further claimed there was inordinate delay in registration of the complaint.After perusing the materials on record, Justice Nagaprasanna pointed out that the accused, perpetrators of cybercrime, created a fake website of SBI and managed to hack the bank website to generate an OTP to make the complainant believe that he, in fact, received the amount in his account; again, hacked the website of SBI to show the balance in the account of the complainant as Rs 225 crore, and secured the commission from the complainant at Rs 7.2 crore."To quash the proceedings at this stage would be to smother a serious prosecution in its infancy and to grant immunity where proceedings cry out for a full-blown trial. This court thus finds these petitions meritless," Justice Nagaprasanna further observed while rejecting the petitions.