Sachin Mittal, Loanwalle, a High Court recital of 1 per cent a day — and an RBI list that still prints the address

Call them “fake loan apps” if the phrase helps you stay angry. The register is more insulting than the phrase.

Naman Finlease Private Limited, CIN U70101DL1997PTC088735, is not a ghost shop invented in a Play Store basement. It sits on the Reserve Bank’s own list of registered NBFCs as on 30 June 2026: serial 4797, New Delhi office, Investment and Credit Company, no certificate to take public deposits, registered address S-370, Basement, Panchsheel Park, Delhi 110017, email [email protected]. The Karnataka High Court had already written the brand name onto that company. In Naman Finlease Private Limited v. State of Karnataka, WP 13963/2023, 2023:KHC:25188, 19 July 2023, the Court recorded that Loanwalle was an application created by the petitioner.

So the question is not why Mint Street missed an unlicensed phantom. The question is why a licensed ICC can walk out of a High Court recital of 1 per cent interest per day on a ₹25,000 ticket, walk past a Special Cell arrest of the man mirrors still list as director, walk past complaint-board smoke about workplace calls and bureau tags, and still greet June 2026 as a name on the official roll.

No court has convicted Sachin Mittal. Say that first. Then ask why the supervisor of NBFCs needed a conviction before it grew a spine.

What the Court was willing to write down

Crime No. 289/2023, South CEN Police, Bengaluru. Complaint of recovery harassment after a Loanwalle loan. Sections 419, 420, 504, 506 IPC and IT Act 66C and 66D. The account frozen. Then the High Court.

The facts the judge was prepared to recite are not a blog post. Loan sanctioned 30 November 2022, due 3 January 2023, principal ₹25,000, interest 1 per cent per day. One per cent a day, if the words mean what they say, is not a housing-finance APR. It is payday arithmetic wearing an NBFC certificate. The Court did not try that rate. It did not acquit anyone. It set aside the freeze and the magistrate’s order because the seizure had not been reported under section 102(3) of the CrPC, and it left the door open for lawful fresh action. The FIR was not quashed on merits.

That is the Indian trick in one paragraph. Police act. Paperwork fails. The CoR does not even blink.

Loanwalle’s present website advertises a cleaner window: 2.9166 per cent a month, 35 per cent APR, tenures of one to three years. Salarywalle, whose app-store publisher is Naman Finlease, publishes an example that runs to a maximum APR of 42.576 per cent. Three prices. One Panchsheel basement. The High Court price is the one Mint Street has never publicly explained.

The man the apps keep orbiting

Sachin Mittal, DIN 02683561, son of Ashok Mittal, is not an anonymous developer. Fintech Cloud’s website names him founder and director. Commercial profiles have long called him founder of Loanwalle, brand of Naman. Registry mirrors still put him on Naman’s board.

On 28 March 2024 the Delhi High Court disposed of Sachin Mittal v. State (NCT of Delhi), BAIL APPLN. 2576/2023. FIR 84/2023, 28 March 2023, PS Special Cell. IPC 420, 467, 468, 471, 384, 506, 120B. Alleged forged-property home loans of about ₹6.80 crore — ₹3 crore IDBI, ₹3.80 crore ICICI. Arrest 11 June 2023. Fourteen days’ police custody. Chargesheet and supplementary chargesheet recorded as filed. Charge-consideration. Fifty-seven witnesses. Regular bail. No opinion on merits. That file is a property-loan prosecution, not a Loanwalle collection case. It is still the founder of the brand sitting inside a Special Cell docket while the NBFC keeps its serial number.

The status report in that order said he ran Naman; that interrogation produced a narrative of fraudulent loans to feed the firm and private moneylenders; that seven FIRs and sixteen victims existed. Those seven files have not been enumerated in the public material reviewed here. A count without numbers is a sentence the State can cash or retract. RBI can ask for the list tomorrow. There is no public sign it has.

The Indian Express, 14 October 2024: Crime Branch arrest of Swadesh Ranjan Mishra alias Durgesh, historical Fintech Cloud director on mirrors, Naman employee 2018–2022 “owned by one Sachin Mittal,” same complainant name, about ₹6 crore alleged. Do not add that figure to ₹6.80 crore. Publication date is not arrest date. The memo remains outstanding. The CoR did not flicker.

What “fake” gets wrong — and what it gets right

An illegal loan app, in Mint Street English, is an app that lends without a regulated entity or outside the Digital Lending Directions. Sachet exists for that ghost market. The Ombudsman and CMS exist for the regulated one.

Naman is on the regulated list. Loanwalle is, on a High Court page, that company’s app. Calling the whole stack “fake” as if there were no CoR is sloppy. Calling the stack licensed payday plumbing is the description the documents will bear.

RBI’s own architecture already knows what good conduct looks like. The Guidelines on Digital Lending of 2 September 2022, consolidated in the Digital Lending Directions, 2025 (effective in stages from May–November 2025), say the regulated entity remains fully responsible for the LSP. Disbursal into the borrower’s bank account. Repayment into the RE’s account. LSP fees paid by the RE, not skimmed from the borrower. Key Fact Statement before money moves. Recovery-agent names sent by email or SMS before the agent calls. No harvesting of contact lists and call logs for shaming. A public directory of Digital Lending Apps operationalised from 1 July 2025. Links on the RE website to products, LSPs, grievance officers, CMS and Sachet.

That is not a missing law. That is a law that has been sitting on the table while a High Court recited 1 per cent a day and a Special Cell took fourteen days of custody from the man the mirrors call director.

Complaint-board posts are not decrees. They are the noise a supervisor is paid to hear. July 2022: writer says ₹20,000 principal, ₹18,000 credited, ₹26,380 demanded in thirty days. February 2023: ₹30,000 for thirty days, alleged ask ₹44,000, settlement fight, alleged recovery visits. July 2023: repayment and an NOC, bureau tag still breathing. April 2025: alleged calls to an employer’s MD and HR, job said to have followed. Unverified. Mapped, with ugly precision, onto the exact conduct the Directions already prohibit.

If those posts are false, Naman can put ledgers on a table. If they are true, the CoR is a costume.

The operator chain has grown another mask. Historic judgment: Naman. Other profiles: Ampire. Current Loanwalle footer: 8byte.ai, CIN U62020MH2026PTC471057. A powered-by line is not a licence. It is another body the DLA directory was invented to catch. There is no public RBI note reconciling the three names.

Why Mint Street can always say it acted

Because it did act — on the industry. Working Group. 2022 circular. 2025 Directions. DLA directory. Sachet. SLCC. Periodic mass cancellation of dead CoRs. As recently as mid-September 2026 the Bank was still cancelling certificates and taking surrenders. Naman Finlease does not appear on the cancellation extracts examined for this piece. Absence from a cancellation list is not a character certificate. It is the nuclear option unused.

RBI is not a criminal court. It cannot hang Mittal for FIR 84/2023. It does not need to. It can inspect an ICC. It can demand the Key Fact Statements that sat behind a 1-per-cent-a-day recital. It can ask which DLA is on the July 2025 directory and which LSP contracts sit under Fundobaba, Salarywalle and Loanwalle. It can call for a board-approved fair-practices audit of recovery. It can publish the existence of that inspection even if the findings stay in Mint Street. It can put a show-cause on a CoR without waiting for fifty-seven witnesses to finish a Special Cell trial.

What the public can see instead is a serial number, an address in a basement, a High Court paragraph, a bail order, and a website that still sells instant credit.

The Ombudsman can award money to a borrower who first complained to the NBFC and waited thirty days. Sachet can forward an unregulated-app complaint to a state committee. Neither of those portals is a substitute for a supervisor who notices that the same DIN, the same pin code and the same brand have been in a criminal judgment and a police freeze and a founder-arrest order — and still prints the name in June.

That is not mystery. That is priority. Small-ticket ICCs do not move bond markets. They move office boys and gig workers. The Directions were written because those borrowers do not have senior counsel. The list was left intact because a list is easier than an inspection.

The other shop the same man is now selling

Fintech Cloud Private Limited, incorporated 11 January 2021, names Mittal founder. On 11 September 2026, Indiabulls Limited — not Sammaan Capital, a different CIN — proposed to buy 70 per cent of it for a labelled ₹1,050 crore, implied equity ₹1,500 crore, paid in up to 21 crore new shares, after two years of nil disclosed turnover and one year of ₹30.31 crore PBT. The target is sold as an LSP. U.Y. Fincorp’s April 2025 filing already put a ₹20 crore NBFC sleeve under Fintech Cloud to run FUNDOBABA. The LSP story and the Loanwalle story are not the same legal book. They are the same neighbourhood. A regulator that will not inspect the neighbourhood has no business being surprised when a listed company tries to list the plumbing.

What strong action would look like, if anyone still wanted it

RBI should pull Naman Finlease’s CoR file this week and say, in one public sentence, whether Loanwalle, Salarywalle and any successor DLA are on the official directory, which Key Fact Statements were issued for the product the Karnataka High Court recited at 1 per cent a day, and whether an inspection has been opened.

The Bank should treat Fintech Cloud’s STPL rails and the U.Y. Fincorp / Fundobaba sleeve as the same supervisory question: who is the RE, who is the LSP, who collects, whose account the money hits, what data the app touches.

Delhi’s trial court should put FIR 84/2023 on a cause list a reporter can read. Fifty-seven witnesses are not interior decoration.

Karnataka Police should say whether Crime 289/2023 is alive.

The State should attach the seven FIR numbers recited in the 2024 status report, or withdraw the count.

Sachet and CMS are not alibis. They are intake trays. Supervision is the job that starts after the tray.

A CoR that outlives a 1-per-cent-a-day recital and a Special Cell remand is not proof of innocence. It is proof of tempo. The apps did not need to be fake. They needed a list, a basement, and a Bank that had already written the rules and then gone back to cancelling the names that no longer mattered.

Disclaimer

This is an investigative opinion based on the RBI’s published NBFC register as on 30 June 2026, the Digital Lending Directions and related circulars, Karnataka and Delhi High Court orders, contemporaneous police-attributed reporting, company and product websites, and unverified complaint-board posts, as at 21 September 2026.

Allegations remain allegations. No court of law has convicted Sachin Mittal or Naman Finlease Private Limited of the offences discussed. The Delhi High Court recorded Mittal’s arrest and granted regular bail on 28 March 2024 without determining guilt. The Karnataka High Court set aside an account freeze on a procedural ground; it did not quash the FIR on merits and did not adjudicate the interest rate as a concluded finding of illegal lending. Naman Finlease appears on the RBI’s registered-NBFC list as at 30 June 2026; that is a registration fact, not a conduct clearance. No public CoR-cancellation or published penalty order against Naman was retrieved in this review; absence of a retrieved order is not proof that confidential supervision did not occur, and not a clean chit. “Fake loan app” is not used here as a judicial finding that the entity is unregistered. User complaints are unverified. Prosecution recitals of seven FIRs and sixteen victims are not an independently verified docket list. Fintech Cloud has not been shown, in the sources reviewed, to be a named accused company.

Nothing in this article is investment advice. Primary orders, the RBI register and the scheme documents of any related listed-company transaction should be read before formal use.