A shell company that existed on paper but never actually sold anything has cost the government exchequer more than ₹16.26 crore, according to Uttar Pradesh’s State Tax Department, whose investigation has now led to two arrests in what officials describe as part of a wider pattern of fake GST networks operating across Bareilly district.
Police arrested Himanshu Kumar, a resident of Bihar’s Arwal district, and Kunwar Sanoj Maurya, originally from Kasganj but currently residing in Bareilly, following a joint operation by the Izzatnagar and Cantt police. Both have been remanded to judicial custody after being produced in court, in a case built entirely around a firm called Him Traders that investigators say generated invoices for goods it never actually supplied.
A Firm Built to Generate Paper, Not Products
The case began with a complaint from State Tax Department Assistant Commissioner Gaurav Singh, alleging that Him Traders had been incorporated using forged documents and used exclusively to issue bogus tax invoices. Those fabricated transactions allowed the accused to claim and pass on Input Tax Credit worth ₹16,26,62,609, a figure that represents money the government never actually collected in the first place, extracted through paperwork rather than product.
Senior Superintendent of Police Anurag Arya constituted a Special Investigation Team once the case was registered, and the arrests followed a raid near Nainital Road based on gathered intelligence. What investigators found during questioning suggests the firm’s fraudulent purpose was not incidental but foundational: Himanshu Kumar allegedly told police he had been operating Him Traders since 2019 at the instruction of an individual identified as Humer alias Mubarak Khan, who paid him ₹3 lakh specifically to lend his name to the operation.
A Commission-Based Billing Trade
The second accused, Kunwar Sanoj Maurya, is alleged to have played a more technical role, preparing and arranging the fake GST invoices themselves in exchange for commission, earning close to ₹7 lakh by facilitating bogus billing across multiple entities. Police records show Maurya has previous cases involving cheating and forgery, a history investigators say raises the possibility that his involvement in fake billing networks predates this particular case.
The recoveries from the arrests, two mobile phones, identity documents and banking paperwork, are now under forensic examination as investigators work to trace how far the fraudulent invoice trail extends beyond Him Traders itself, and whether the same operators have floated additional shell firms under different names.
Bareilly’s Recurring Fake-Firm Problem
This is far from an isolated case for the district. Bareilly has emerged as a persistent hotspot for fake GST billing networks over the past year, with cases ranging from a ₹38 crore fake supply racket detected through routine return scrutiny to a coordinated crackdown that yielded 22 FIRs and 13 arrests across a network of shell firms showing crores in turnover with no real business activity on the ground. A separate case last month traced nearly ₹14 crore in fraudulent ITC claims to a firm called Shri Shyam Traders, whose operator admitted to running multiple fake entities under different names over several years.
That pattern, individuals lending their identity documents to a fake firm for a one-time payment while a separate operator handles the technical billing work, appears to repeat closely enough across these cases that tax officials increasingly describe it as an organised, semi-professionalised trade rather than isolated opportunism. Investigators in the current case say identifying Humer alias Mubarak Khan’s role, and whether he has orchestrated similar firms elsewhere, remains a central focus as the SIT works through banking records and transaction trails, with further arrests expected as the wider network comes into view.
