After 40 years of chase, CBI arrests proclaimed offender in ₹5.69 lakh bank fraud case

The CBI on Wednesday (June 24, 2025) arrested a fugitive who had evaded justice for more than 40 years in connection with a bank fraud case, drawing to a close an extraordinary saga of prolonged abscondence, officials said.

Satish Kumar Anand, a former manager of Hapur-based Ashok Trading, and Ashok Kumar, the owner of the company, were convicted in 1985 for defrauding the Bank of India of ₹5.69 lakh, they said.

Anand and Kumar had allegedly conspired with the branch manager in 1977 to fraudulently secure a loan for the company. The loan was sanctioned on the basis of a fabricated receipt and forged bills falsely indicating the dispatch of a consignment, a CBI spokesperson said.

As a result of the fraud, the bank incurred a wrongful loss amounting to ₹5.69 lakh, a sum Anand is accused of misappropriating.

The CBI which had registered the case in 1978 spent seven years in investigation and trial, resulting in the conviction of Anand and Kumar awarded by the Special Court in Dehradun in 1985. The branch manager was acquitted of all charges, the spokesperson said.

Anand was awarded five years rigorous imprisonment for the crime but he absconded after the award of sentence and skilfully avoided detection for nearly 40 years.

“After conviction, the accused Satish Kumar Anand absconded. The court of special judge of CBI, anti-corruption, Dehradun, declared him a proclaimed offender on November 30, 2009,” the spokesperson said.

Now in his seventies, Anand was arrested in the Rohini area of North Delhi and taken to Dehradun in Uttarakhand, where he was presented before a Special Court and remanded to judicial custody, the spokesperson said.

Officials said Anand managed to evade arrest by frequently changing his location and remaining elusive at known addresses in New Delhi and Hapur in Uttar Pradesh.

In pursuit of actionable intelligence, the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) cultivated local informants in areas where Anand was last known to reside.

A breakthrough came when investigators traced a mobile number registered in the name of Anand’s son.

Acting on the subscriber information, the agency established a surveillance network around the associated address, ultimately leading to Anand’s location in Delhi’s Rohini, marking the end of a 40-year run from the law.