In a shocking case of identity theft and fraud, a 40-year-old lawyer from Gurgaon has been arrested for allegedly masterminding a sophisticated land scam by assuming the identity of a man who died over three decades ago. The accused, identified as Navin Rana, is accused of using forged documents to pose as Om Prakash, a Bajghera resident who passed away in 1993, to illegally sell his land and siphon off nearly Rs 60 lakh.
The Elaborate Fraud: From Bank Account to Land Sale
According to police officials, the elaborate fraud began in December 2015. Navin Rana, a practising lawyer, walked into the Axis Bank branch in Palam Vihar and opened an account. He presented forged documents to establish himself as the deceased Om Prakash. Merely two days after the account was opened, a sum of Rs 46 lakh was deposited into it. This payment was from Angel Builtech Private Limited, a real estate company, for a plot of land in Bajghera that Rana had sold them while impersonating Om Prakash.
The unusually large transaction immediately triggered the bank's internal monitoring systems. As a result, the newly opened account was frozen on January 1, 2016. However, this was not the end of the scam. In a bold move, the account was quietly transferred to Axis Bank's Sadar Bazar branch in October 2016. For the next two years, the suspicious transaction remained under the radar.
Unraveling the Deception: Family Discovery and Police Complaint
The plot began to unravel in 2018 when officials from the Palam Vihar branch contacted Angel Builtech to verify the details of the land deal. Sensing foul play, the company initiated its own investigation. They managed to trace the family of Om Prakash, only to make a startling discovery: the real Om Prakash had died in 1993, and his family had long since moved away from Bajghera to other sectors in the city.
Realizing they had been cheated, Angel Builtech alerted the authorities. Simultaneously, Om Prakash's family, upon learning that their deceased relative's identity was being misused, filed a formal complaint of cheating and forgery at the Bajghera police station in 2018. This led to the registration of an FIR against Navin Rana. A senior police officer noted that a compromise was later reached between the parties involved, following which the Punjab and Haryana High Court quashed the FIR.
The Final Heist and Eventual Arrest
Despite the quashing of the criminal case, Angel Builtech pursued a civil suit to recover its lost funds. In 2023, the court ordered Axis Bank to return the money. It was during this process that a further layer of fraud was uncovered. Rana had managed to reactivate the frozen account using yet more forged paperwork. He then transferred the entire amount, which had grown to approximately Rs 59 lakh with accrued interest, to an IDFC Bank account. From there, he siphoned the money into his own accounts through NEFT and IMPS transactions.
The long-running fraud finally reached its climax in September 2024. The manager of the Axis Bank Sadar Bazaar branch filed a formal complaint after noticing suspicious activity and the missing funds. The case was taken over by the economic offences wing, which led to the arrest of Navin Rana on Wednesday.
During police interrogation, Rana confessed to the crime. Sandeep Kumar, a police spokesperson, stated that Rana admitted to knowing Om Prakash personally and being aware of his death. He confessed to selling the deceased's land by impersonating him, opening the bank account in 2015 to receive the payment, and later using forged documents to unfreeze the account and transfer the money in 2023.
An FIR has been registered against Navin Rana under multiple sections of the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita (BNS), including charges of criminal conspiracy, cheating by personation, forgery, and criminal breach of trust. Police have indicated that the ongoing investigation will now focus on tracing any possible accomplices, recovering the siphoned money, and seizing any remaining forged documents in Rana's possession.
