The LUCC scam that has shaken Uttarakhand for years has taken a deeper and more troubling turn, with the CBI now naming 46 accused in a freshly registered FIR. Among those listed are actors Shreyas Talpade and Alok Nath, who served as brand ambassadors for the cooperative society and helped lend it public credibility.
LUCC, or the Loni Urban Multi Credit and Thrift Cooperative Society, entered Uttarakhand in 2019 posing as a high-return investment venture. It expanded rapidly by opening more than 35 branches across the state and deploying a wide network of agents who urged people to deposit their savings with promises of unusually high profits.
Within a short time, the company abruptly shut down operations, trapping crores of rupees belonging to thousands of investors. Complaints surged as people found themselves without returns or explanations, eventually reaching the High Court, which ordered a CBI probe.
As the LUCC case continues to unravel, an unexpected and serious parallel development has emerged involving the same key accused. Shabab Hussain, also known as Shabab Hashim, already a central figure in the LUCC matter, is now entangled in another major fraud allegation.
Actor Aayush Shah has filed multiple criminal complaints in Mumbai’s Girgaon and Andheri courts, accusing Shabab and his partners of cheating and forgery worth over Rs 4.44 crore in connection with Myfledge Private Limited, an aviation training institute in Mumbai with an advertised pan-India presence.
The institute was run by Shabab along with Bishwajit Badal Ghosh and Piyalee Shyamlendu Chatterjee. This revelation suggests that the financial misconduct may span far beyond cooperative investments, raising concerns about a pattern of deception across sectors and states.
Myfledge claims to operate centres across cities including Bangalore, Lucknow, Bhopal, Guwahati, Raipur, Mangalore, Siliguri, Surat, Chandigarh, Dehradun, Navi Mumbai and Mumbai. The complainants allege that these claims, along with advertised success stories and assertions of owning multiple properties, were part of a scripted façade created to attract students and investors. The pattern echoes the LUCC strategy, where confidence-building measures were used to reel in unsuspecting individuals.
The CBI registered the fresh LUCC FIR based on a complaint lodged at Kotdwar Kotwali. State police had earlier filed 18 FIRs, with charge sheets already submitted in ten. Investigators have found that LUCC lured people by promising high-yield investments supposedly linked to gold, oil and international refinery ventures, encouraging even small savers to convert modest sums into larger deposits. When the company vanished, thousands were left without any hope of recovery.
Public anger over the scam has been intense. Women who lost their life savings held protests in Dehradun and marched to the Chief Minister’s residence demanding action. The matter also reached Delhi, where on July 24 four Uttarakhand MPs, Trivendra Singh Rawat, Anil Baluni, Ajay Bhatt and Mala Rajya Lakshmi Shah, met Union Home Minister Amit Shah and pressed for swift action.
The unfolding Myfledge allegations have only deepened concerns that the LUCC scam was not an isolated episode but part of a larger, coordinated network of financial deception that operated across multiple industries, leaving a trail of devastated investors and students in its wake.
