The jeweller's counter
Published 3 October 2026
Moving crores out of a bank is easy. Moving them out of the paper trail is the hard part, and the agencies' account of how it was done involves a trade as old as the money itself.
The sale that did not happen
The Haryana anti-corruption bureau said in March that more than Rs 250 crore had been routed to Sawan Jewellers from companies linked to the prime accused. Its statement said "the accused falsely recorded the sale of gold items to these firms/companies in their books". The bureau arrested the jeweller, Rajan Katodia, on a Saturday in mid-March and alleged he had "played a pivotal role in hatching the conspiracy right from the inception of the fraud" and earned a hefty commission. Sawan Jewellers, the report said, received funds through Capco Fintech Services, SRR Planning Gurus and Swastik Desh Project, all identified as shell companies used to layer the diverted money.
The ED's court submission explains the next step. After funds reached the third parties, cash was collected from them in lieu of the bank transfers, and the cash was then distributed to people in Chandigarh, Mohali and Panchkula. The people who collected it, the agency said, were Rishi's own employees, among them Bhupinder, Rahul Kumar, Manish Kumar, Amritpal Singh and Gurpreet Singh. The jeweller's books show a sale. The jeweller's cash drawer shows a refund, less a commission.
The route, as the ED stated it this week
On Tuesday, 29 September, the ED searched 14 premises across Chandigarh, Mohali and Panchkula. UNI reported the agency's finding: public funds siphoned off in the IDFC First Bank and AU Small Finance Bank fraud were channelled through jewellers' accounts as purported business transactions, with the corresponding amounts returned in cash after deduction of commission. This was published on 30 September, a Wednesday, and it is the most recent official description of the route. It matches, in structure, what the ED told the court in May and what the vigilance bureau said in March.
There is a reason for the jeweller. Gold and cash are where the paper stops. A transfer from a government account to a jeweller's account is a transaction a bank can see. The cash given back at the counter is not. The ED's phrase for the trade is in the form of its statement to the court, in which it alleges the funds were transferred to various third parties and cash was collected from them in lieu of such bank transfers. The agency alleges that the cash then funded property, lifestyle and favours. The CBI's later filings add detail on what the cash bought, which we reach in the chapters on the officers.
The names on the list
The jewellers are named in the ED's account as Sawan Jewellers, Malik Jewellers and KLG Jewellers, among others, and the vigilance bureau's later count records the arrest of the jeweller as the twelfth. The tally by mid-March, according to Hindustan Times, was 12 arrests, six bank employees, four private individuals, one government official and the jeweller. The investigation team had raided 16 locations, seized more than 25 electronic devices and six luxury vehicles, three Toyota Fortuners, two Innovas and one Mercedes, and identified 10 properties suspected to have been bought with proceeds of crime. The ED, on its side, raided 19 premises on 12 March and froze over 100 bank accounts.
These numbers are in the public record because the agencies issued them. They are not findings. A freeze is not a conviction and a seizure is not proof of source. What they show is the scale of the response: within three weeks of the bank's disclosure, two agencies, state and central, were pursuing the same money from different ends.
The pattern in the gold
There is a small human detail in this part of the file that explains why the system worked for as long as it did. On the ED's account, the cash collectors were not strangers. They were employees of the manager, and the people who signed the firms' paperwork were relatives and household staff. The structure is intimate. It does not need an outside network, which is exactly what makes it hard to detect from inside a bank: from the branch's view, the firm's signatories were customers who came in with cheques that looked right.
Whether that is how it happened is for the courts to decide. This file follows the allegations in the order the agencies made them. We have the method, the firms and the exits. What is missing is the moment when anyone at the bank noticed. The next chapter reaches the first documented moment: a Saturday in March 2025.
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