Love, lies and fake gold: An extramarital affair that led to a Rs 3-crore loan fraud

4 min readNew DelhiUpdated: Jul 31, 2026 01:45 AM IST Pankaj was arrested on July 7. Bansal is out on bail. It began with a phone call received from a wrong number. Around 2015, Pankaj Kumar, a gold appraiser at non-banking financial company (NBFC) Sai Corporation in Delhi, received a call from a woman who had dialled the wrong number. The two stayed in touch and eventually began an affair.Pankaj, however, was already married with two children. He soon found out that it was difficult to support both his family and the woman on his salary. The result: he went on to siphon money from his company, orchestrating a gold loan fraud worth more than Rs 3 crore over six years. During this time, he transferred around Rs 90 lakh to bank accounts linked to the woman in multiple transactions. According