"Total Failure of Duty”: Bombay HC Fines UIDAI, GST, Bank ₹10,000 Each in Aadhaar-PAN Identity Fraud Case [Read Order]

In a recent judgment, the Bombay High Court criticised and imposed penalty on multiple government bodies, including the Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI), the GST department, and Union Bank of India, for their prolonged inaction in an identity theft case involving the misuse of a Mumbai resident’s Aadhaar and PAN details.

Vilas Prabhakar Lad, the petitioner, had filed a writ petition under Article 226 of the Constitution after discovering that an unknown person had fraudulently used his Aadhaar and PAN numbers to open a bank account in Ahmedabad, register a bogus firm under GST, and issue cheques that later bounced, leading to criminal cases being filed against him.

Despite repeated complaints and supporting evidence submitted to the relevant authorities since early 2020, no substantive action was taken to investigate the fraud or protect the petitioner’s identity.

The petitioner’s counsel submitted that neither UIDAI, the Income TaxDepartment, nor the GST and banking authorities initiated any criminal proceedings or deactivated the misused identity credentials.

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The counsel submitted that the petitioner had faced criminal complaints, property attachment proceedings by the GST department, and suffered immense mental agony as a result of the impersonation.

The GST department’ counsel argued that the matter was under the jurisdiction of Gujarat authorities, the UIDAI and the bank argued that they followed standard procedures at the time of account opening.

A division bench of Justices M. S. Sonak and Jitendra Jain found that the bank had failed to authenticate the Aadhaar details as required under the RBI's Master Directions and Aadhaar regulations. The court also observed that none of the authorities had filed a First Information Report (FIR) despite having sufficient grounds to do so.

The court held that the regulatory and enforcement authorities had shown a complete lack of urgency and responsibility. The court quashed the attachment order issued by the Gujarat GST authorities, stayed ongoing criminal proceedings against the petitioner, and directed the GST department to remove the petitioner’s Aadhaar and PAN numbers from the bogus firm's records.

The court further ordered UIDAI and Union Bank of India to pay Rs. 25,000 each to the petitioner and others to pay Rs. 10,000 each within four weeks and recover the costs from the remaining errant authorities. The writ petition was allowed.

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