A weekend arrest that shook India’s crypto world ended swiftly in a courtroom as a judge found nothing to hold the accused on. A magistrate court in Thane cleared the case against CoinDCX co-founders Sumit Gupta and Niraj Khandelwal, granting them bail after ruling that no prima facie case existed against them.
CoinDCX is among India’s largest cryptocurrency exchanges, and the charges against its founders grew out of an impersonation scheme in which fraudsters built a fake website—coindcx.pro—that closely mimicked the real platform and used it to con investors out of their money.
A 42-year-old insurance consultant from Mumbra, a city in the Thane district of Maharashtra, filed the complaint on March 16. The consultant had alleged that he lost ₹71.6 lakh (roughly $85,000) after unknown individuals approached him posing as CoinDCX representatives. They lured him with high returns and exclusive franchise rights and pitched him what sounded like a chance to become a local business partner of the exchange. He paid a lot of money between August 2025 and February 2026 before realizing he had been duped. His complaint named six people, the two founders among them, which led Thane Police to detain Gupta and Khandelwal over the weekend.
Court Finds Founders Were Not Present at Scene
The case, however, fell apart quickly before the magistrate. The court noted that the founders were in Mumbra when the fraud happened, and the complainant himself told the court that the men he met at a café in Mumbra—where the money changed hands—were not Gupta or Khandelwal.
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A co-accused named Rana had since repaid the defrauded amount, and with the matter squared away between the victim and the actual perpetrators, the court found no reason to keep the founders in custody. Both walked out on ₹50,000 bonds each.
CoinDCX called it a straightforward case of “third-party impersonation,” warning that rogue actors are increasingly cloning the identities of well-known financial brands to trap retail investors. The company said it had flagged over 1,212 websites that faked its platform in under two years, asking users to stick to verified official channels.
