Police arrest 6 more accused in PNB gold loan scam case

Jhunjhunu: Police made a major breakthrough in the fake gold loan and gold theft case at the Punjab National Bank branch in Nawalgarh, Jhunjhunu by arresting six more accused Thursday. With this, the total number of arrestes in the case has risen to eight, including the former bank manager and his accomplice, an ad hoc member of the same bank.Police have so far recovered 1.555 kg of gold jewellery from the accused, which is estimated to be around Rs 2.32 crore. Investigations have revealed that the then branch manager, Amit Jangid had embezzled approximately Rs 8.78 crore by opening 214 fake gold loan accounts in the bank. He in collusion with Santosh Saini, who operated as an ad hoc member business correspondent of the bank, sanctioned gold loans through fake accounts.
SP Brijesh Jyoti Upadhyay said that the investigation revealed the accused had replaced real gold jewellery from the strong room with fake ones, and withdrew loan amounts by obtaining OTPs from account holders. A reward of Rs 20,000 thousand had earlier been announced for the arrest of Jangid, who has since been apprehended along with Saini.The newly arrested accused have been identified as Omprakash (40), Sandeep Kumar (29), Sunil Kumar (32), Sunil Sunda (30), Ramesh Saini (40 and Dheeraj Saini (32), all residents of Jhunjhunu district.The case came to light on Feb 1, 2026 after PNB senior branch manager Mukesh Sihag, filed a report. During an inspection of the bank's gold safe on Jan 28, officials discovered that several packets had been tampered with and fake jewellery had been kept in place of orginal ones.