As many as 12,787 bank frauds were detected at Indian banks in a span of just three years from 2014 to 2017, and not at just the public sector banks, but also at the private banks. Indian banks, both public and private sector, lost Rs 16,789 crore to bank frauds in just one year — 2016-17, the latest government data shows in several written replies to the Parliment.

On average, each year, some 4,000 bank frauds were detected since 2014, and despite the volume, they largely went unnoticed. Moreover, the actual number of bank frauds taking place in the system cannot be accurately ascertained as many of them go undetected for years, like in the case of Punjab National Bank. Investigations in many cases also remain inconclusive.

The Rs 11,400 crore bank fraud. allegedly committed by diamond baron Nirav Modi by colluding with a former bank employee. took place for seven years since 2011 until it was detected the third week of January. But once detected, it became the centre of the daily news cycle, with people debating and outraging on the issue.

Effectively, in just two weeks, another fraud of Rs 390 crore at the Oriental Bank of Commerce by a diamond exporter came to light when the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) booked jewellery exporter Dwarka Das Seth International Pvt Ltd.

A break-up of data also suggested that the bank frauds were high in 2014-15, dipped a little in 2015-16 and surged again in 2016-17. The total number of bank frauds at PSBs recorded in these three years were 8,622, while at private banks, they were 4,156.

Even though in the light of the PNB fraud, industry players demanded privatisation of PSBs for greater accountability, with the perception that there are fewer or no frauds at private banks, the government has a different take on it.

Finance MoS Shiv Pratap Shukla, in a written reply to Lok Sabha on February 2, said that “keeping in view that PSBs have about 70% market share, the incidence of such frauds in private sector banks is higher than in PSBs.” In the last few days, the demand for privatisation of PSBs gained momentum with FICCI, Assocham, Godrej chief Adi Godrej and Bajaj chief Rahul Bajaj joining the league for it.

However, Arun Jaitley ruled out taking the proposal forward saying that it was a matter of large political consensus and the opinion in the Parliment did not seem to favour it. India’s biggest lender State Bank of India has reported the highest number of bank frauds, while Bank of Baroda, which is also among one of the five largest PSBs, recorded second highest number of bank frauds. Detailed data for private banks were not available.

Bank frauds are in addition to the problem of Non-Performing Assets, which has surged from just 2.11% to over 10% between 2011 and September 2017. A report by Reuters said that India’s total bad loans by the end of September 2017 were Rs 9.46 lakh crore. Shiv Pratap Shukla also said that “losses incurred by PSBs are primarily because of provisioning on account of high Non-Performing Assets (NPAs).”