The Phone Call That Sent Sixty Lakh Out of a Bank

1. A call to the cashier

On 24 May 1971, State Bank of India cashier Ved Prakash Malhotra received a telephone instruction that he understood to come from the highest level of government. The official account said Rustom Sohrab Nagarwala had imitated Prime Minister Indira Gandhi’s voice. The request involved sixty lakh rupees and a purportedly urgent national purpose, making ordinary verification seem inconvenient.

Urgency was asking the bank to move faster than its safeguards.

2. The money leaves

Malhotra arranged for the cash and handed it over to a man presented as an authorised recipient. The transaction did not follow the normal documented path expected for such a large payment. Whether the story concerned a secret mission or another claimed national purpose varied in accounts, so the precise wording of the call should not be invented as a recorded conversation.

The cash was real even if the authority behind the instruction was not.

3. The missing receipt

When Malhotra sought confirmation from the prime minister’s office, he learned that the supposed request was not authorised. He reported the matter, and police moved quickly. The event exposed how a claimed senior identity could override a cashier’s usual requirements, while the later questions showed that the speed of the response did not automatically make the explanation complete.

The receipt check arrived after the money had already gone.

4. Arrest and recovery

Nagarwala was arrested within a short period, and most of the money was recovered. The official version attributed the withdrawal to impersonation, with a confession used in the proceedings. Recovery established where much of the cash had gone, but it did not by itself answer every question about authorisation, the bank’s conduct or the reliability of the confession.

Finding the money was easier than closing every question about the call.

5. The unusually rapid conviction

Nagarwala was convicted and sentenced to four years’ imprisonment in proceedings remembered for their extraordinary speed. He later sought to challenge the account and died in custody in 1972. Those events generated suspicion and political controversy, but controversy is not proof of assassination or a secret state operation, neither of which is asserted as the explanation here.

The fast judgment left behind a slow-growing controversy.

6. A commission revisits the case

After a change of government, a commission led by Justice Jaganmohan Reddy examined the affair. Its report criticised important aspects of the investigation and the treatment of the confession. The inquiry also did not establish every popular conspiracy claim, making its findings a reason for careful qualification rather than a licence to replace the official story with another unsupported certainty.

The later inquiry questioned the neatness of the first ending.

7. A real fraud case with disputed mechanics

The withdrawal, arrest, recovery, conviction and subsequent inquiry are documented events. The exact explanation of the impersonation and the conduct surrounding the transaction remain contested in historical accounts. The story is therefore more accurate as a case about authority, verification and unanswered procedural questions than as a flawless ten-minute voice trick presented without the later doubts.

The money came back. Complete certainty did not.

Sources

• Wikipedia contributors — Nagarwala case (CC BY-SA 4.0)
• Indian Express — Reddy inquiry retrospective