The Odisha Economic Offences Wing (EOW) has frozen over Rs 1.45 bank deposits of a dubious company which deceived people by fake loan applications.

“EOW Bhubaneswar has frozen an amount of Rs 1.45 crore of accused Nitin Malik, director of M/s Right Start Business Pvt. Ltd. lying in the accounts with HDFC Bank and IDFC First Bank in connection with No.13 dt.02.07.2022 u/s 294/384/420/467/468/471/ 120-B IPC, r/w Sec.66 (D) IT Act, 2000”, a statement issued by EOW said on Saturday.

The EOW probed into an allegation of Sakti Prasad Dash of Bhubaneswar regarding the harassment, extortion, mental torture by the recovery agents of the digital loan app “Kredit Gold” by sending the humiliating, abusive messages and morphed photographs, it said.

The EOW had received a series of complaints from victims and the Reserve Bank of India relating to illegal functioning of loan apps which are not registered as Non-Banking Financial Company (NBFC) under Reserve Bank of India (RBI) Act. M/s Good Start Business Pvt. Ltd. and M/s Right Start Business Pvt. Ltd. of which accused Nitin Malik is the Director, are not registered as a NBFC with the RBI.

The companies are illegally operating as digital lenders. It is suspected that this international gang is running at least 10 such illegal loan apps. It is worth mentioning that there are more than one lakh downloads of “Kredit Gold” app.

The accused Nitin Malik became the director of M/s Good Start Business Pvt. Ltd. and M/s Right Start Business Pvt. Ltd. at the instance/connivance of some Chinese mastermind/bosses. The main objective of the said company is to purchase and run virtual phone numbers from BSNL, Airtel and Vodafone to be used for running and facilitating the lending and recovery through different loan apps. Nitin Malik was in direct and regular touch with at least three Chinese nationals and used to get a huge sum/salary for this job.

The accused, Nitin Malik, was arrested on 13 July this year and he is still in judicial custody. Another accused Neerav Gupta has also been arrested in the case and now in judicial custody, the statement concluded.