Govt admits to cases of fraudulent withdrawal of money through Aadhaar

Govt says the steps had been taken to prevent such cases and action also initiated against those responsible for the reported cases

The government on Tuesday admitted that there had been incidents of money being fraudulently withdrawn from bank accounts using the customers' Aadhaar number.

According to the information, at least six such cases had been reported by four public sector banks so far involving fraud of around Rs 15 million, Parliament was told.

"As per data reported by public sector banks (PSBs), there have been incidents of money being fraudulently withdrawn from bank accounts using the customers' Aadhaar number in a few banks," Minister of State for Finance Shiv Pratap Shukla told Rajya Sabha in a written reply.

He said steps had been taken to prevent such cases and action also initiated against those responsible for the reported cases.

While two cases of fraudulent mapping of Aadhaar numbers were reported in Bank of India involving a sum of Rs 13.7 million, another two cases surfaced in Syndicate Bank involving Rs 226,000.

In both cases surfacing in the Bank of India, the government said fraudulent mapping of Aadhaar numbers was done by business correspondents or staff.

"Bank has sensitised operational staff to take proper precautions by mapping Aadhaar numbers, strengthening control measures, and stepped up inspections to prevent such frauds in future. Bank has initiated disciplinary action against the erring staff," Shukla said.

In case of Syndicate Bank, the government said the amounts fraudulently withdrawn had been recovered and to prevent such cases, "the bank is verifying all Aadhaar-seeded accounts through Aadhaar authentication and has issued standard operating procedures for, and instructions for due diligence on, Aadhaar seeding".

Apart from these four cases, one case each has been reported in Allahabad Bank and UCO Bank involving Rs 195,000 and Rs 0.49 lakh respectively.