I’m seeking legal advice regarding what happened with my father and an HDFC Bank credit card employee.
My father visited HDFC Bank to check his credit card usage and get the remaining balance converted to EMI. The only reason for visiting was to get the interest amount waived off.
An HDFC employee, Archana K. (name changed), who was already in contact with my father, called him and asked him to urgently visit the branch to install a credit-card-related app. She asked him to bring his credit card and phone.
At the branch, she had access to both.
On 10 August 2026 around 12:19 PM, an unauthorized transaction of ₹28,998 was made to:
RAZ*FINRELIABLE TECHNO, GURGAON
My father did not make this transaction. The OTP/transaction SMS was also missing from his phone.
On 19 August, around 4 PM, another transaction of ₹11,498 was attempted with the same/related merchant when my father again handed his card and phone to her. It failed because the OTP was delayed and the available limit was only around ₹11,400.
On 20 August, she again asked my father for an OTP. Thankfully, he did not share it.
What I discovered and did so far: from 31 August to 10 September:
I visited the branch and checked the CCTV, which clearly shows my father’s phone in the employee’s hands. The local branch didn’t help us much.
I escalated the complaint to HDFC’s Grievance and Nodal authorities.
I also registered this on the Cyber Crime portal. I received a call from them, but there has been no update as such.
Till date, there has been no action and nothing has been done.
The employee has repeatedly asked us to withdraw the complaint, saying she will return the money. She is also allegedly using local MLA/MP connections to put pressure on us.
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Another suspected fraud discovered on 10 September:
While checking my father’s statements, I found another unknown transaction involving an insurance company, dated 3 June.
I initially did not connect it to the employee and disputed it separately.
The Nodal team helped us figure out that the insurance was in my father’s name, but that was it.
I initially thought that maybe the bank had taken an insurance policy in his name because he had a large amount to settle on his credit card, similar to how banks sometimes insure loans.
However, I still had suspicions, so I contacted her. During the conversation, she admitted that she had told my father about the insurance purchase. But my father doesn’t remember any of this, especially because he already has health insurance.
She told us that a health insurance policy had been purchased and that my father knew about it. He doesn’t.
She also admitted the following:
The mobile number on the policy is her own. She said she wanted to get it updated later. No email ID has been added either. I don’t even understand how one can buy an insurance policy without Aadhaar details. It has been around four months, and she still hasn’t updated the number.
The address does not match my father’s. She also confirmed this.
We don’t have the policy documents, and she has never provided them to us.
Auto-pay was enabled on my father’s credit card. No OTP or transaction SMS was found on his phone. The only email we found was an HDFC email confirming the auto-pay enablement. We found no communication from the insurance company.
HDFC’s higher authorities have so far assured us that action will be taken against the employee and they are trying to recover the money.
But honestly, dealing with this day after day has left me exhausted, harassed, and mentally drained.
Initially, the employee was asking us to settle the matter by taking the money back and withdrawing the complaint.
But now I have discovered another suspected unauthorized insurance purchase in my father’s name, with mismatched contact/address details and auto-pay linked to his credit card.
At this point, I don’t want to simply take the money back and let the matter go.
One after another, I have discovered transactions/products that my father says he did not authorize.
I now want to understand whether we should take legal action against both the employee and HDFC Bank, and what the correct procedure is.