What do you do when you wake up one morning to learn that ₹30 crore has been deposited in your bank account overnight?

That is exactly what happened to a flower vendor from Channapatna who had been scrounging for funds so that he could undergo a medical procedure. On December 2, 2019, bank officials came knocking on 32-year-old Syed Malik Burhan’s door seeking an explanation for “some money” that had been deposited in his wife’s account.

“We had only ₹60 in the SBI account, which is in my wife Rehana’s name. We were trying to raise ₹2 lakh for an ear surgery I need to undergo, and then suddenly there’s around ₹30 crore in the account,” he said.

Account frozen

Since then, Mr. Burhan, who lives with his wife and two children, a 10-year-old son and a nine-year-old daughter, in a rented house in Channapatna has been running from one agency to another seeking help from the authorities to probe the source of the money. The bank account has been frozen.

According to Mr. Burhan, the bank did not reveal the amount of money deposited in the account. On December 2 evening itself, Mr. Burhan and his wife met with bank officers to answer some questions. “They kept asking me who had sent her the money. We kept telling them that we knew nothing about it,” he said.

Suspecting that something was afoot, Mr. Burhan later went to an ATM near their house, and saw that there was around ₹30 crore in his account. Thinking that the ATM was not working, Mr. Burhan visited two more kiosks. On the advice of his family and friends, he approached the police and the I-T Department.

On December 5, he went to the bank and sought details of the account stating that he wanted to file a complaint. “But I was told that the account was frozen. I told the bank officers that a few days before the money appeared, I had ordered a sari for my wife online. The next day, a person who said he was an executive with the online platform called me to inform me that I was the winner of an SUV worth ₹14 lakh. He asked me to pay ₹6,900 towards the insurance of the vehicle following which he would send the car to my address. I told him that I had no money and needed ₹2 lakh for my surgery. The person took the bank account details and the OTP and disconnected the call saying that he would get back to me,” Mr. Burhan said.

He tried approaching the I-T Department in Mandya and Channapatna to file a complaint, but officers allegedly asked him to leave. Finally, with the help of a friend, he approached a senior police officer, who, took up the case on January 9.

Mr. Burhan said he recently got a call from an unidentified man who claimed that he was the one who deposited the money. “He said I could keep ₹15 crore if I transferred the remaining ₹15 crore back to him,” he said.

The Channapattana police filed an FIR under cheating, impersonation and also under various sections of the I-T Act. The police suspect that the bank account has been misused by online fraudsters and are trying to track down the person who had contacted Mr. Burhan.