One PAN, two people: a decade of foreign accounts, removed in fifteen days

Background

Around 2016, Mr. Venkatesha G of Shimoga discovered something that should not be possible: the Income Tax Department had issued his PAN number to another person as well — another Venkatesh — and that stranger's borrowing had begun attaching itself to his credit file. He did everything a diligent man could do alone: traced the other individual, spoke with him, surrendered the PAN, obtained a new one. And the foreign accounts stayed anyway. For nearly a decade, loans he never took reported against his name, and by the time this case reached us he had almost lost hope it could ever be corrected.

How this case arrived — from the field

Co-authored by Srinidhi · Sales, Kenstone Credit — who brought the case in

This case did not arrive through a website form. I heard of Mr. Venkatesha during a visit to an auditor, told the auditor we would look into it, and then went to Mr. Venkatesha's office myself. He already knew of Kenstone twice over — through a Chartered Accountant familiar with our work, and through Mr. Gangadhar, a previous client whose own issue we had resolved. I reviewed his CIBIL report with him and explained the mechanics: how a duplicate PAN welds two people's borrowing into one file, why surrendering the PAN alone does not unweld it, and the process that could.

I also told him what our honesty rules require: this would not be an easy case, and it would need extensive follow-up. He gave us roughly three months — and his trust, earned partly by the people who had vouched for our work before I ever said a word. From there, it moved to Vaidhehi's desk.

What the analysis found

The June 2026 report ran to thirty-nine pages, and inside it the case record counted more than a dozen accounts over the years that were never his. On that June pull, seven foreign entries were still riding his file, across four lenders he had never borrowed from — Bajaj Finance, Federal Bank, IndusInd Bank and Cholamandalam — sitting alongside his genuine banking with UCO, Karnataka Bank and South Indian Bank. One detail says everything about why this mattered: his score read a healthy 766. The damage was not points — it was carrying another man's liabilities, another man's conduct, and another man's future defaults, welded to his name.

The approach — and the clock

Given the urgency, disputes went out against every incorrect account immediately, with the identity evidence attached — and the matter was escalated in parallel through the public grievance (PMO portal) route to keep it moving inside the timeframe. Continuous follow-up, status monitoring, and the discipline of treating each foreign entry as its own dispute did the rest. Onboarded 1 July. Resolved 15 July. He had given us three months; it took fifteen days.

The outcome

The July report is four pages where June's was thirty-nine. Every foreign entry is gone; only his genuine accounts remain. His score moved barely at all — 766 to 768 — and that is the honest heart of this case: this was never about points. It was about accuracy — a file that finally tells the truth about one man instead of two.

Report evidenceView his reports — before and after+

Report pulls22 Jun → 15 Jul 2026 Foreign entries on the June pull7, across four lenders he never borrowed from On the July pullZero — only his genuine banking remains RedactedPAN, DOB, account nos., control nos. & amounts

Tap to compare the two reports

Before · 22 Jun After · 15 Jul

Before · pulled 22 Jun 202639-page report

Open full size ↗

After · pulled 15 Jul 20264-page report

Open full size ↗

A foreign entry on the June pull — and the account section after

BeforeA lender he never borrowed from

Open full size ↗

AfterOnly his genuine banking

Open full size ↗

Raw extracts from Mr. Venkatesha's own TransUnion CIBIL reports, labelled by report pull dates. PAN, date of birth, account numbers, control numbers and amounts are redacted. Published with his consent.

Why this case matters

Because it documents the rarest error genre we have published: an identity-level error — above wrong statuses, above mis-reported payments — where the state itself issued one identity to two people, and the credit system faithfully recorded the resulting fiction for a decade. It shows why self-help has limits: Mr. Venkatesha did everything right on his own, and the accounts stayed, because bureau records do not correct themselves when a PAN is surrendered — they correct when each lender is made to act. And it closes a loop we are proud of: he came to us on the word of a Chartered Accountant and of a former client. If your report carries accounts you never opened, this is exactly the category the law fixes — start with the analysis, before any payment.