One of my clients recently had a case which I am explaining below and if you are stuck in such similar situation, here is what to do.
Note: Due to attorney-client privilege, I cannot disclose complete case details or identify the actual parties involved. However, I am sharing the essential facts and legal approach so that if you find yourself in a similar situation, you can understand the available solutions and legal remedies.
TL;DR: A payment made to a stranger on a social media marketplace, where the goods were never handed over, is cheating, and you can pursue it as a criminal case. The 1930 complaint and the lien on the beneficiary account are only the first steps; the money comes back when an FIR is registered and the investigating officer or a court directs release of the frozen amount. If the money has already moved, you need an FIR plus, in many cases, a separate civil suit for recovery.
Key Facts of the Case
- The client, Nikhil Deshmukh, paid Rs 8,500 through UPI to a seller he met on a social media marketplace.
- The UPI ID was said to belong to the seller's mother, a detail that should have raised a flag.
- The client arranged the pickup himself; the courier's rider could not reach the contact number the seller had shared.
- The number was fake. The pickup never happened and the item was never handed over.
- A complaint on 1930 was filed, followed by a personal visit to the cyber crime branch.
- The bank was directed to mark a lien on the account that had received the money.
- No FIR had been registered at that stage at that stage. The money was still sitting in the beneficiary account.
Everything above comes from the client's side of the story. The seller was never traced, never spoke to the police, and offered no explanation. Keep that in mind as you read the rest — a court would want to hear what the other side says, and the account details, the chat history and the call records are what will decide whether this is treated as a fraud or as a disagreement over a sale.
When Does an Online Payment Fraud Become a Criminal Case?
Paying someone who then does not deliver is, by itself, a broken deal. That is a civil matter. What turns it into a crime is the dishonest intention at the time the money was taken — the seller never intended to hand over the goods, and used a lie to get the payment.
That is the offence of cheating under Section 318 of the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita, 2023. Where cheating is used to dishonestly induce a person to deliver property — and money is property — the specific provision is Section 318(4) BNS, which carries a maximum of seven years' imprisonment and a fine. This is the provision that replaced the old Section 420 IPC.
Two features of the facts here matter for the criminal case:
- The mobile number given for the pickup was fake. That is evidence of intention formed before or at the time of payment, not afterwards.
- The UPI ID belonged to someone else — here, the seller's mother. Routing money through another person's handle is a recognised pattern in these cases.
If the cheating happened using a phone or a computer, the police will usually add Section 66D of the Information Technology Act, 2000 — cheating by personation using a computer resource — which carries up to three years and a fine. Where the identity of a real person is misused to open or operate the account, Section 66C may also be added. Section 318(4) BNS is cognizable and non-bailable; the IT Act offences are cognizable as well.
The point that most people miss: nothing about the small amount changes the character of the offence. Rs 8,500 taken by a lie is still cheating. What the amount changes is how much time and money it is worth spending on it.
Why the 1930 Complaint Alone Does Not Get the Money Back
This is where the client was stuck, and where most people get stuck. The 1930 complaint and the portal acknowledgement do real work — they flag the beneficiary account at the bank, and a lien is marked so the balance cannot be moved. But a lien is not a refund. It is a hold.
Three practical consequences follow:
- A lien has to be renewed. It is not a permanent freeze. If nobody follows up with the bank and the investigating agency, the hold can lapse and the account holder regains control of the money.
- Banks are cautious about releasing. Most banks will not credit the money back to a complainant on the strength of a portal acknowledgement alone. They want an FIR number and a written request from the investigating officer, or an order from a court.
- Nothing moves until someone owns the file. Without an FIR, there is no investigating officer, and without an investigating officer there is often nobody with the standing to ask the bank to release the liened amount.
So the 1930 complaint and the FIR are not alternatives. They are sequential steps, and the second one is the one that unlocks the money.
Can You Recover Money After a UPI Fraud? The Sequence That Works
Broadly, this is the order in which things should happen. Timelines vary by state, by bank and by how quickly the money was moved.
1. Report on 1930 or the national cyber crime reporting portal. Do this the same day if you can. The first day or two — before the money is layered out of the receiving account into others — is the only realistic window for a clean recovery. You will get an acknowledgement number. Save it.
2. Write to your own bank. Not a phone call to customer care. A written complaint with the UTR or transaction reference number of the payment, the date and time, the amount, and the UPI ID of the beneficiary. Ask them to mark the lien and keep it alive. Keep the acknowledgement.
3. Give a written complaint at the cyber crime cell. Carry the bank statement or the payment screenshot, your ID, the portal acknowledgement, and a plain one-page summary of what happened. Ask for a receipt or a diary number on your copy.
4. Press for an FIR. Under Section 173 of the Bharatiya Nagarik Suraksha Sanhita, 2023 — the provision that replaced Section 154 CrPC — the police must register an FIR when the information discloses a cognizable offence. The BNSS also allows you to give the information at any police station, which is then forwarded to the station that has jurisdiction, so a jurisdictional excuse is weaker than it used to be.
5. If the police will not register. You have two routes. You can go up the chain in writing — to the Superintendent of Police or Commissioner — and you can file a complaint before the Magistrate, who may either take cognizance or direct the police to investigate. The power of a Magistrate to order investigation is in Section 175(3) BNSS, the successor to the familiar Section 156(3) CrPC. This is the step that most often converts a stalled complaint into an actual investigation.
6. Get the lien released. Once there is an investigating officer, you or your lawyer write to that officer and to the bank, quoting the FIR number and the acknowledgement, asking that the liened amount be credited back to your account. Do not assume this happens automatically. Follow up in writing every few weeks, because the lien needs renewing.
7. The charge sheet and the compensation question. If a person is traced and the case goes to trial, the court has power to direct compensation to a victim as part of sentencing. That is the end of a long road. The realistic path to money in the bank is step 6.
One caution on timing: the BNSS permits a short preliminary enquiry in some cheating cases before an FIR is registered, with the approval of a senior officer, depending on the punishment the offence carries. Where a case falls into that gap, registration can take days or weeks rather than hours. It is a real reason for delay, and it is not something you can argue away at the counter.
What If the Money Has Already Moved Out of the Account?
This is the hard scenario, and the one where a clean refund is least likely.
Fraud money is usually moved fast, through several accounts, sometimes to a wallet, sometimes into cash. If the receiving account is emptied before the lien is placed, there is nothing to release. The lien can only hold what is in the account.
The investigators can trace the chain further and place liens on downstream accounts, and accounts used repeatedly for this kind of work are treated as mule accounts. But the deeper the money has travelled, the longer it takes and the lower the chance of recovering the full amount.
Where the criminal route produces nothing, a separate civil suit for recovery of the amount can be filed. Two honest warnings about it: the court fee and the time involved can exceed a claim of Rs 8,500, and unless you have the seller's real name and address, there is nobody to sue. Which is why the most useful thing you can do in the first week is get the beneficiary account holder's details in the record — through the police, through the bank's response to your complaint, or through the notice that the bank sends.
Do the Banks Have an Obligation to Refund You?
Partly, and less than people assume.
The Reserve Bank of India has issued directions on limiting customer liability in unauthorised electronic banking transactions. Broadly, they provide that a customer who reports quickly — within three working days of the transaction — is not liable, that liability can fall on the customer for delay, and that where the loss is because of the bank's own deficiency, the customer bears nothing. The directions also require a written complaint and time-bound resolution.
The difficulty in a case like this one is that the payment was not unauthorised. The client made it himself, on his own phone, to a UPI ID he chose to pay. The bank's argument will be that the transaction was authorised, and that the fraud was committed by a third party, not by the bank. That argument is not always accepted, but it is not easily answered either.
So treat the bank as a participant in recovery, not as the payer of last resort. Push the criminal route as the primary path.
The Limits of This Kind of Case
Being straight about the weak spots:
- If the seller genuinely intended to sell and simply failed to deliver, this is not cheating. It is a breach. The absence of dishonest intention at the time of payment defeats a criminal case, and you would be left with a civil claim.
- The client arranged the pickup himself. The seller could argue the buyer failed to collect the goods. The fake phone number is what answers that argument, and it needs to be documented — the call records, the failed call logs, the chat where the number was shared.
- Small claims rarely justify a full trial. That is not a reason to do nothing. It is a reason to do the cheap things quickly — the report, the written bank complaint, the FIR — and not to fund a prosecution for years over a few thousand rupees.
- Recovery is never assured. The lien has to be in place, and the money has to still be there. Those two conditions decide more cases than any legal argument does.
- Evidence decays. Chats get deleted, numbers get recycled, and the beneficiary closes the account. What you have on day one is your strongest material.
Frequently Asked Questions
My payment was only a few thousand rupees. Is it worth filing an FIR?
For the money alone, probably not as an exercise in litigation. For the recovery, yes — because the FIR is what allows an investigating officer to ask the bank to release the liened amount. Without it, the money often just sits there until the hold lapses. The 1930 report and the FIR cost you nothing but time.
Which police station do I go to if the seller is in another state?
Start at the cyber crime cell where you live. Under the BNSS you can give the information at any police station and it is to be forwarded to the station with jurisdiction. In practice, cyber cells handle these cases centrally, and the practical constraint is not jurisdiction but whether the account details can be traced.
Can I get my money back without a court case?
Sometimes, yes. If you report within the first day or two, the lien holds the balance in the receiving account, and once an FIR exists, the investigating officer's written request to the bank usually gets the amount credited back to you. That is the ordinary route and it involves no litigation.
How long does the whole process take?
An FIR, where the police cooperate, is a matter of days to a few weeks. Tracing the beneficiary, getting the lien released and the money credited is realistically weeks to a few months, and longer if the account has to be traced through other banks. If it goes to trial, add years.
The bank says the transaction was authorised, so it is not their problem. Is that right?
Not entirely. The RBI directions do place obligations on banks in unauthorised transaction cases, and there are time-bound requirements. But a voluntary payment induced by a fraudster is a harder case against the bank than a payment that someone else made from your account. Expect the bank to take that position, and put your energy into the police complaint.
What should I keep ready?
The payment screenshot or bank statement showing the debit and the UTR number. The chat with the seller. The phone number that was shared and the call log showing that it did not connect. The seller's profile or listing. The 1930 acknowledgement number. Your ID proof. Write
…Your ID proof. Write a short one-page note in your own words: the date of payment, the amount, what was promised, what went wrong, and what you have done so far. Facts only — no adjectives about the seller. That note is what an investigating officer actually reads first, before the screenshots.
Is there a deadline for reporting a UPI fraud?
No statutory deadline stops you from filing an FIR in a cheating case, and a late complaint is not automatically dead. But two clocks are running. The first is the money — the realistic window to catch the balance still sitting in the receiving account is a day or two. The second is the RBI's liability framework for unauthorised electronic transactions, which counts in working days from the transaction. Report the same day if you can, in writing if you cannot.
Can I do all of this myself, without a lawyer?
For the 1930 report, the written complaint to your bank and the complaint at the cyber crime cell — yes. A lawyer becomes useful at three specific points: when the police will not register the FIR, when the lien is about to lapse and nobody will renew it, and when you have to move the Magistrate for a direction to investigate. Those are the points where these complaints usually stall.
If Your Complaint Has Stalled, Send Me These Papers
Most of the matters that come to this chamber are stuck at one of three places: no FIR, a lien that quietly lapsed, or a police station that sent the complainant away with nothing on paper. All three are workable, and all three need the same starting material.
- The payment screenshot or bank statement showing the debit, with the UTR or transaction reference number.
- The date of the payment, and the date you reported it on 1930.
- The acknowledgement number from the portal, if one was generated.
- Any written complaint you gave the bank or the cyber cell, and any receipt, stamp or diary number on your copy.
- A two-line note: what was promised, and what the police have told you so far.
Send those to me@sudhirrao.com or through /contact-us. If you would rather start with a short conversation, /book works. The chamber is at Lawyers' Chamber, Chamber No. 86, Supreme Court of India, New Delhi — 110001, and the phone is +91 97295 06771.
If your dispute is a family or matrimonial matter rather than a fraud, Adv. Jyoti Rao handles those.
Two limits, stated plainly. On some of these facts there may be nothing to argue — if the seller genuinely meant to hand over the goods and the pickup failed for a reason that had nothing to do with him, what is left is a civil claim against a person whose address you may not even have. I will say that on the first call rather than after a fee. And nobody can promise the money back. Whether the lien holds and whether the balance is still in that account decide the outcome more than any argument does.
This article is general information about the law in India and is not legal advice on your own situation. Every case turns on its own facts, and you should have your papers read before acting on anything here.
Advocate Sudhir Rao, Supreme Court of India
Facing a similar matter? Speak to a Delhi criminal defence lawyer — Advocate Sudhir Rao appears in bail, trial and appellate matters before the Delhi District Courts, the Delhi High Court and the Supreme Court of India.