Lucknow: Major fraud involving the replacement of genuine gold with fake ornaments has been discovered at Manappuram Gold Loan’s Vikasnagar branch. The company has lodged a complaint against five employees, alleging they substituted 786.7 grams of customer gold worth ₹43.34 lakh with fake items. An FIR has been filed, and the police are currently investigating.

According to Shubham Dey, the area head of Manappuram Finance, the Kerala-headquartered company operates over 3,500 branches across India. In February 2025, a customer from Gorakhpur, Amit Kumar Tripathi, repaid his loan and visited the Vikasnagar branch to reclaim his pledged gold. Upon inspection, he identified the returned jewellery as counterfeit, triggering an internal audit.

The audit revealed that gold belonging to three customers had been replaced with fake items.

Those implicated include former branch head Anurag Singh, former assistant branch head Satish Singh, and former junior staffer Aman Singh. Two current employees, current branch head Pankaj Dwivedi and assistant head Somnath Yadav have also been named in the FIR.

Investigators found that audit stickers had been carefully removed from gold packets, enabling the suspects to switch genuine gold with fakes without initially being detected. The branch's locker requires two keys which were held by the branch head and assistant. During staff transitions, one key was temporarily handed to junior staff.