India saw 229 banking frauds per day in FY21, less than 1% amount recovered

With the rise in digital transactions, the number of banking frauds in the country has also gone up. On an average, India saw 229 banking frauds per day in financial year 2020-21, of which less than 1 per cent amount has been recovered, as per the data from the Reserve Bank of India (RBI).
 
India saw 83,638 cases of banking frauds in FY21, involving Rs 1.38 lakh crore. Of this, only Rs 1,031.31 crore has been recovered so far, as per the data provided by the RBI in response to a Right to Information (RTI) query filed by India Today.
 
However, the numbers of FY21 show a slight improvement from FY20, when India witnessed about 231 banking frauds daily. There were 84,540 frauds which took place in FY20. The total amount involved was Rs 1.86 lakh crore, of which Rs 16,197 crore has been recovered.
 

The data shows that the number of banking frauds witnessed a sharp jump after November 2016, when the government demonetised the Rs 500 and Rs 1,000 currency notes. The digital push in a cash-starved system was likely the reason for this increase.
 
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While 5,071 cases of frauds were reported by the scheduled commercial banks and select financial institutions during 2016-17, it jumped to 40,062 cases in 2017-18. The amount involved in the fraud also rose from Rs 23,927 crore in FY17 to Rs 41,231 crore in FY18.
 
During the seven financial years between FY15 to FY21, when the Narendra Modi-led NDA government was in power, 2.84 lakh cases of banking frauds took place involving Rs 5.99 lakh crore. Of this, Rs 49,000 crore, or about 9.8 per cent, has been recovered. In comparison, there were 29,451 such cases, involving Rs 31,674 crore, during the seven years period from FY08 to FY14 when the Manmohan Singh-led UPA government was at the Centre. The recovery during this period was at Rs 7,493 crore, or 23.7 per cent of the total amount involved.   
 
Overall, 3,14,270 cases of banking frauds were reported during FY08 to FY21, involving Rs 5.31 lakh crore. Of this, only Rs 56,502 crore has been recovered.

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