An Ajmer-based washerman lost his PAN card two years ago and all of a sudden gets a showcause notice from the Income-Tax (I-T) Department seeking explanations regarding over ₹598 crore worth of transactions initiated from a bank account opened against his name and linked with his PAN card. CA Ashish Niraj, Partner, A S N Company, Chartered Accountants says a person should immediately perform following three tasks if he or she loses PAN card: 1. File FIR 2. Apply for a duplicate PAN 3. Check if GST number generated against your name on GST Website According to the news daily, ‘ToI’, the Ajmer washerman, Jitendra Kumar, denied any knowledge of the bank account mentioned in the tax notice and clarified that he had lost his PAN two years ago in Pali, Rajasthan. It is then that tax authorities suspected that his lost PAN card might have been misused by fraudsters to open the bank account in his name and made crores worth of transactions. Kumar has alleged that some businessmen in Pali might have been behind all this, and that a Surat-based diamond firm might have also been involved in the hefty transactions. Is it possible to open bank account using somebody’s PAN? According to Niraj and CA Deep Koradia, it is not possible to open bank account with just PAN. But it has been found in many cases that fraudsters have managed to create forged id proof or address proof documents of the victim like their Voter ID card. They have used such forged documents of victims and along with their PAN to open bank accounts without their knowledge and carry out transactions through such accounts. The same could have happened with Kumar. But it’s just not possible to open somebody’s bank account with only one single ID proof. The misuse of PAN of others is rampant these days. One needs to be very careful while giving PAN , Aadhar etc to anyone. They get Bank Accounts opened on basis of forged docs. –CA Ashish Niraj, Partner, A S N Company, Chartered Accountants Is it possible to generate GST numbers with just PAN? Again, it’s just not possible to generate GST number of anybody using just their PAN. But again according to Niraj, there have been cases where scammers were able to generate forged ID proof docs and used all of those to generate fake GST numbers. Many people are not aware but GST Numbers have been obtained on others PAN and bogus transactions worth crores of rupees are done. —CA Ashish Niraj Coming back to what one should do after losing PAN, we have already mentioned the steps to be taken above in the article. Let’s understand those steps in detail. How to apply for a duplicate PAN? You can apply through the Protean (formerly NSDL) website Track: Use the 15-digit acknowledgement number for tracking How to check whether fake GST numbers have been generated against your name? Niraj has shared a 4-step task to find out whether fraudulent GST account has been created or not: 5. List of GST allotted in your name will reflect. Niraj says that if the citizen finds any GST in their name and has not applied for it, then they should immediately file an FIR. Also. one should raise a complain with GST Department. Precaution to take if you share PAN number somewhere: Even when you are giving PAN Copy for any documentation, write in Bold letters the purpose for which it is being given with date such as “To be used only for DMAT KYC Purpose, submitted on 10th April 2026. -CA Ashish Niraj, Partner, A S N Company, Chartered Accountants Post navigation Adani Group wins bid, acquires assets of bankrupt Jaypee Group:Vedanta loses out despite pitching a higher amount
