Naresh Gujral duped of Rs 7.8 crore: Mule account holder nabbed, promised 5% cut

4 min readNew DelhiUpdated: Jun 23, 2026 03:57 PM IST

Naresh Gujral, whose father served as Prime Minister of India from April 1997 to March 1998, is a chartered accountant-turned-businessman with interests in textiles and apparel manufacturing. (Source: File)

Delhi Police has arrested a 40-year-old ‘mule account holder’ from Amritsar in connection with the Rs 7.8 crore cyber fraud involving Naresh Gujral, former Member of Parliament and son of former Prime Minister I K Gujral.

The arrest marks the first breakthrough in the investigation into the second layer of nearly 35 bank accounts through which the defrauded money was routed after the scam.

Police said the accused, Navneet, a small-time businessman, had suffered financial losses and was in urgent need of money. He allegedly allowed his bank account to be used for receiving and transferring the cheated funds in exchange for a 5% commission. According to police sources, he received nearly Rs 5 lakh for his role in the operation.

How was the money routed?

The Delhi Police’s Intelligence Fusion and Strategic Operations (IFSO) unit, which registered an FIR in the case last week, found that the stolen money was initially distributed among four first-layer accounts — two in Maharashtra and one each in Telangana and Andhra Pradesh.

Police sources said the entire Rs 7.8 crore was first transferred to these accounts before being spread out across nearly 35 accounts nationwide and subsequently funnelled into hundreds of other accounts.

Officials said police teams were dispatched to multiple locations to apprehend the account holders, but the suspects were found absconding.

The police had later managed to freeze Rs 4 crore as the money was not withdrawn from the accounts. Officers had said this was unusual because the pattern in internet financial fraud has been that the cheated money disappears quickly, often within minutes.

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WhatsApp ‘boss scam’

The fraud came to light on June 16 when a senior executive in the finance division of a textile company owned by Naresh received a WhatsApp message from an unknown number. The display picture on the account was that of Naresh.

The message instructed the executive to urgently transfer a large sum of money to a specified bank account. “He was asked to transfer around Rs 1.5 crore through RTGS to an account whose details were provided in the message,” a police officer had said.

However, the sender was not Naresh. “My employee tried calling the number, but the fraudster disconnected the call,” Naresh had told The Indian Express earlier. The scammer, posing as him, claimed he could not answer because he was in a meeting.

According to investigators, the fraudster had used Naresh’s profile picture and attempted to impersonate him convincingly over WhatsApp.

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The possibility that the message was fake apparently did not occur to the company official. “He could have contacted my secretary. But he got trapped in the ‘boss scam’,” Gujral had said.

Over the next four days, the fraudster allegedly requested three more transfers, and the company executive complied each time. By the end of the scam, a total of Rs 7.8 crore had been transferred to accounts controlled by the fraud network, police had said.

Police said that they are further probing another chain to establish the links of the person who posed as Naresh and asked to transfer the money.

Naresh, whose father served as Prime Minister of India from April 1997 to March 1998, is a chartered accountant-turned-businessman with interests in textiles and apparel manufacturing. He represented Punjab in the Rajya Sabha from 2007 to 2022 and is a senior leader of the Shiromani Akali Dal. He is also the nephew of the late renowned artist Satish Gujral.