Quick Take | How to rob a bank in India without rumpling your tuxedo

Well-connected businessmen are able to run away with tens of millions of rupees in loans from state-run banks as institutions are manipulated by fat cats

Reading Time:3 minutes

Gokulnath Shetty, centre, the former deputy manager of the Punjab National Bank, is escorted into a Mumbai court. Photo: AFP

Published: 1:15pm, 24 Feb 2018Updated: 1:41pm, 24 Feb 2018

Last week masked men broke into a branch of the Union Bank of India in the city of Kanpur by drilling a hole in the wall. Once inside, they disabled the security cameras, looted the safe deposit boxes and left with cash and jewellery worth tens of millions of rupees.

Newspapers and TV channels accurately described the robbery as sensational and shocking.

But the people of India were far from shocked. Posts and messages on Twitter, Facebook and WhatsApp asked why the thieves had bothered to the rob the bank the old-fashioned way. Didn’t they realise that there was a much easier way? A way that would let you could keep the money, never be brought to account and live in luxury in the world’s most glamorous cities for the rest of your life.

From left, South Korean pop star Rain, global jeweller Nirav Modi and Chinese actress Zhang Ziyi attend Modi's first international flagship store grand opening in Hong Kong. Photo: Handout

Everyone got the reference. For all of the last fortnight, India has been abuzz with stories about two of the country’s best-known jewellers. One of them, Mehul Choksi, may be the most important figure in the country’s diamond and jewellery sector and his Gitanjali brand is a household name. The other, Nirav Modi, who is related to Choksi, has been India’s most glamorous jeweller, with film stars as brand ambassadors and shops on London’s Bond Street, New York’s Madison Avenue and in Hong Kong.

‘Reverse Bank of India’: How note ban has turned a revered institution into a joke

But, police investigators say, both men built their empires on credit that was fraudulently obtained from a single government-owned bank, the Punjab National Bank. The exact figures are in dispute but some estimates put the extent of the fraud at US$1.8 billion.