Lucknow: Manisha Rastogi still keeps her husband Anand’s photograph on the living room wall of her modest home in Ashok Nagar, Kanpur. Anand died of cancer, but what haunts Manisha more than the disease is the betrayal that followed.
“A few weeks before he passed away, some people came to our house saying they were from an insurance company. They said they could help us with money through a government scheme,” Manisha recalls, her voice choking. “They took his documents, got a bank account opened in his name, and after his death, withdrew Rs 17 lakh. We did not even know such a policy existed.”
Anand’s family was just one among hundreds across northern India that have been devastated by a criminal syndicate operating a meticulously planned insurance scam. In villages and small towns, fraudsters targeted poor, illiterate families with members on their deathbed, promising financial aid. What followed was a betrayal so deep that it robbed families of their last hopes—and the dignity of their loved ones.
A Scam That Begins at the Bedside
In January, a chance police chase in Sambhal district led to the unravelling of one of the country’s largest and most sinister financial scams. Acting on reports of car theft, the Sambhal police intercepted a Scorpio SUV and arrested two men—Omkareshwar Mishra from Varanasi and Amit from Amroha. Inside the vehicle were 19 debit cards, Rs 11.5 lakh in cash, and thousands of documents related to life insurance policies.
The revelations that followed were staggering.
Omkareshwar, a self-proclaimed insurance investigator, confessed to being part of a pan-India racket. Their targets: poor, terminally ill individuals who had only days or weeks left to live.
“We would go to families under the guise of government aid. People were desperate. They trusted us,” he told this reporter. “We took their documents, altered their Aadhar details with help from insiders, and opened fake bank accounts. Then we insured them for sums of Rs 10, 20, even 30 lakh. We paid a couple of premiums and waited for death.”
Once the insured person passed away, the gang swiftly claimed the insurance money. The families, unaware, received nothing. The syndicate had their fingerprints, Aadhar updates, and even fake death certificates—facilitated through collusion with local officials.
The gang had allies in banks, insurance companies, mobile SIM vendors, Aadhar correction centres, and even gram panchayats. In two years alone, they are estimated to have looted over Rs 30 crore through suspicious policies—most citing heart attacks as the cause of death. Investigators believe the fraud could exceed Rs 100 crore over the past eight years.
The Broken Families They Left Behind
Rashida from Karonda village in Barabanki, 35 kms from Lucknow, recalls how an ASHA worker named Farzana came to her home when her husband Rahmaan was bedridden. “She said it was a government scheme for financial help. I handed over the documents. A few weeks later, he died. And then, silence. No money. No aid.”
Satyaveer Singh Yadav, a farmer in Moradabad, could not even be at his wife’s bedside when she passed. “I had insured my wife, Sugarwati. When she was about to die, some insurance agents came to the house. They convinced my daughter to hand over the documents. After her death, I discovered they had withdrawn all the insurance money.”
In Gurgaon village of Sambhal district, Meeravati's eyes well up as she remembers her husband Sudama. “They told me they’d help. I gave the papers and even got my husband’s thumb impressions done. Then, nothing. We only found out later that insurance money had been taken in his name.”
A Trail of Grief, a Call for Justice
According to Sambhal ASP Anukriti Sharma, 70% of the deaths under these suspicious insurance claims were reported as heart attacks—a red flag for investigators. The fraud spanned states including Uttar Pradesh, Uttarakhand, Delhi, Bihar, Jharkhand, West Bengal, Gujarat, and Chhattisgarh.
The gang’s sheer scale and systematic functioning have shocked investigators. Fake insurance policies were processed with such precision that even internal audits failed to detect them—until now.
“This is not just financial fraud,” said ASP Sharma. “This is emotional extortion. These families were already dealing with death, and then they were robbed of the little hope they had.”
With only two years of data in hand, the police are scrambling to identify all victims and trace the money trail. Ten major insurance companies are under the scanner, with several files already flagged as suspicious.
Meanwhile, families like Manisha’s are still waiting—for justice, for closure, and for someone to acknowledge their pain. “I couldn’t save my husband,” she says softly. “But at least punish those who used his death to profit.”
