The Bombay High Court has declared the continued detention of two accused in the alleged fake Amazon call centre fraud case illegal and directed their release, holding that detaining an accused without a court taking cognizance and without a valid remand warrant has no legal authorisation. The judgment, delivered on October 21 by a division bench of Justice Sarang V. Kotwal and Justice Ranjitsinha Raja Bhonsale in Criminal Writ Petition No. 1100 of 2026, was reported on Thursday.

Source: Law Trend

The case stems from a CBI FIR registered on August 8, 2025. The prosecution alleges that an illegal call centre operating from Rain Forest Resort in Igatpuri, Nashik district, posed as Amazon Support Services, sent phishing voicemails to citizens in the United States and Canada, obtained their financial credentials and siphoned money through cryptocurrency and gift cards. After a raid on August 9, 2025, the CBI arrested several people, including the two petitioners — Sameer Siroha, who allegedly handled IT infrastructure, and Shaibaz Kaiser Ateeq Shaikh, described as a team leader. The allegations are yet to be proved at trial.

Source: The Bar Bulletin

The procedural chain decided the case. The CBI filed its charge-sheet on November 3, 2025 without any offence under the Prevention of Corruption Act. On February 12, 2026, the Special Judge for CBI cases in Pune held that, with no corruption-act offence and no public servant among the accused, the special court had no power to take cognizance, and transferred the case to the Judicial Magistrate First Class at Igatpuri. The High Court found that the Igatpuri magistrate thereafter neither took cognizance nor issued remand orders or warrants under Section 346(2) of the BNSS, and had not even directed the jail superintendent to keep the two men in custody.

"As a result of the above discussion, we find that the detention of the Petitioners in jail is without any authorization by a competent Court and, hence, their detention is illegal. Consequently, they will have to be released from their detention," the bench held, as reported by Law Trend. The court ordered the release of both men on bail on a personal bond of ₹1 lakh each with sureties, on conditions including surrender of their passports and weekly reporting to the CBI. It clarified that the CBI remains free to rearrest them by following due procedure established by law.