A magistrate’s court in Thane granted bail to CoinDCX co‑founders Sumit Surendra Gupta and Niraj Ashok Khandelwal on March 23, finding no prima facie case in a 71 lakh rupee (about $75,000) cheating complaint that involved a fake trading site impersonating the exchange. In a common order on their bail applications, the court said the available evidence did not establish a case against the founders.
The founders had been questioned and remanded after an informant alleged they had defrauded an investor. The magistrate recorded that the investigating officer had “no objection” to their release and noted the applicants were not in Mumbra when the alleged offence occurred. The order found that another person, posing as an accused, had cheated the informant—a point the informant later admitted in court.
The judge also noted the informant filed an affidavit saying a separate accused, identified as Rana, repaid the cheated amount and that the founders were not the individuals he met at a café in Kausa Mumbra where the fraudulent transaction was said to have taken place. With the matter reported as “amicably settled” between the informant and the main accused, the court saw no grounds to suspect the founders of tampering with evidence or witnesses.
Each founder was released on bail after executing a 50,000 rupee bond (roughly $530) on the condition they cooperate with ongoing investigation and trial proceedings.
CoinDCX said the order supports a “third‑party impersonation” explanation, attributing the fraud to a lookalike domain, coindcx.pro, which it says is unrelated to the company. The exchange warned this incident reflects a wider rise in impersonation and phishing scams targeting prominent financial and crypto brands in India, urging users to verify domains and interact only with official platforms and verified social media accounts.
Founded in 2018 and based in Mumbai, CoinDCX is among India’s largest crypto exchanges. The company reached an estimated valuation of about $2.45 billion after a funding round led by Coinbase Ventures in October 2025. It previously came under scrutiny after a July 2025 incident in which hackers drained roughly $44 million from an internal operational account; the company said no customer funds were affected.