A letter asking for the money back
Published 3 October 2026
The fraud did not end because a bank found it. By the public record, it ended because a department wrote a routine letter asking to close an account.
13 January
On Tuesday, 13 January 2026, per the FIR, the department sent letters to both banks to close the accounts opened under the scheme and transfer the available funds, Rs 50 crore at IDFC First Bank and Rs 25 crore at AU Small Finance Bank, along with accrued interest, to Axis Bank. The FIR says the response was uneven. AU Small Finance Bank transferred Rs 25,45,84,863 to Axis Bank and closed the account on 16 January 2026, a Friday, about Rs 25.46 crore, which is the Rs 25 crore asked for plus interest. IDFC First Bank, by contrast, transferred only Rs 1,27,44,689 to Axis Bank and proceeded to close the account, despite the closure request specifying Rs 50 crore along with accrued interest.
That is a difference of about Rs 48.7 crore on one account. The department, per the FIR, recorded its disagreement with the account status and the statement provided by IDFC First Bank. The bank has described the discovery in its own words: the issue came to light after a government department sought to close its account and transfer the funds, and the amount the department mentioned did not match the balance.
The committee
The department's director formed an inquiry committee on Wednesday, 11 February 2026 to look into the "mismatch/issues" with the bank's accounts, per the FIR. To investigate further, the committee asked for the account opening form, the log details and the voucher details of all transactions. The bank submitted those details on 16 February 2026, a Monday. Senior bank officials attended the committee's proceedings that day and were directed to submit written statements. According to the FIR, they promised to submit the statement after due vetting and following the bank's procedures, but no such statement had been submitted to date.
The ET's explainer reads the sequence slightly differently from the FIR, and the difference is worth noting. ET says the situation came to light on 18 February, when the Haryana Finance Department issued its circular de-empanelling both banks, and that after the circular a department noticed the discrepancy while closing an account. The FIR's chronology puts the department's closure letter on 13 January, and the committee on 11 February. Both can be true: a department's letter in January, a committee in February, and a government-wide circular on 18 February that made every department do the same exercise at once. What the sources agree on is that the trigger was a closure request and a balance that did not match.
The statement nobody gave
There is something in the FIR's sentence about the senior officials who promised a statement and did not give one. A bank that finds a discrepancy of this size in its own books has an obvious interest in being the first to report it. The state's anti-corruption chief said as much in February, per The Tribune: the bank wanted to lodge a complaint and approached the Chandigarh and Mumbai police, but as the money belonged to the Haryana government the case was registered in Haryana. In other words, in the vigilance bureau's account, the bank wanted to be the complainant. Whether that desire pre-dated or followed the department's discovery is not stated.
The cleanest summary that the sources allow is this. By mid-February, the department had a mismatch, an inquiry committee, a bank that had returned about 2.5 per cent of what was asked for, and officials who had promised a statement. Two days later, the state government acted without waiting for the committee's conclusion.
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