MITRA finds the folio. It does not release the money
MITRA is a search tool, not a claims portal. You reach it through MF Central, the joint CAMS and KFintech platform, and also from the AMFI, SEBI and AMC websites.
You enter your PAN, authenticate with an OTP, and it searches an industry-level database built by the two big registrars. You can narrow it with an email, a mobile number, a date of birth, a nominee name, a bank account number or a city.
What comes back is deliberately thin. For privacy reasons the result lists the fund houses that appear to hold a folio against your PAN, grouped by AMC. Not folio numbers, not scheme names, and not a valuation. From there you approach each AMC or its registrar yourself.
So MITRA does not process a KYC change, a bank update, a transmission or a redemption, and it will not tell you what the holding is worth. Anything describing it as an unclaimed-money claim portal is wrong, and that framing wastes the time of someone who finds a match and then cannot act on it.
Why a folio goes quiet when you emigrate
A decade of silence is rarely neglect. After emigration the folio's KYC, address, bank and contact details simply stop matching the person who owns it.
Five things quietly stop matching you: the KYC still says resident, the address is one you left, the registered mobile was surrendered, the email was a work address at an old employer, and the bank account the AMC would credit has been closed or converted. The fund house has no way to reach you and no account to pay you.
The 2024 KYC rules made this sharper. Records that were fine for years moved to registered or on-hold status when the underlying proof no longer satisfied the new norms, and an on-hold KYC blocks redemption even on a folio you can see.
You do not need the old phone number to search
This is where most people give up before starting, and they are wrong to. The OTP is sent to an email address or mobile number you supply when you log in, not to whatever contact sits on the dormant folio. The registrars' own FAQ is explicit that a non-resident can use the platform by giving an email address where the OTP can be triggered.
So a surrendered Indian mobile does not lock you out. Log in with any email you actually control.
The folio's old email, mobile, date of birth, nominee name, bank account number, city or PIN code are optional search refinements, used to narrow the results. They are not the authentication channel, and you can search without any of them.
Your units did not go to the government
Company shares and mutual fund units follow different unclaimed-asset rules, and most people arrive here applying the shares rule to funds.
| Company shares | Mutual fund units | |
|---|---|---|
| After long non-contact | dividends unclaimed for 7 years move the SHARES themselves to the IEPF | units stay in your folio |
| How you get them back | file Form IEPF-5 and wait | deal with the AMC directly |
So a dormant folio has not been confiscated. The units sit where they always sat. If your problem really is shares rather than funds, that is the IEPF reclaim route and it is a longer road.
Unclaimed payout money is a separate pot
An inactive folio and unclaimed money are two different things, and you can have one without the other. A redemption or dividend that was processed but never reached you does not sit in the folio: it goes into a separate plan of a liquid scheme, with the expense ratio capped and no exit load.
Claim within three years of the due date and you receive the amount plus the income earned on it. Claim after three years and you still receive the amount, plus income only up to the end of the third year, because income beyond that is applied to investor education.
The principal itself does not lapse. Waiting costs you return, not the money.
What has to be true before the AMC can pay an NRI
Once MITRA gives you a match, the fund house has to be able to lawfully pay a non-resident. That means four things lining up.
Your KYC has to be reclassified from resident to non-resident, with a foreign address and identity proof attested in the way the registrar accepts. FATCA and CRS declarations have to be current, which for a US or Canadian holder can also determine whether the AMC will let you transact at all. The payout bank account has to be an NRO account in your name, since the old resident account cannot receive it. And the contact details on the folio have to be ones you actually control.
These updates have to be completed before a redemption can be processed, so the work is entirely front-loaded.
If the folios were a parent's
You can search for them. SEBI built the platform for this case specifically: its stated objective is to let investors identify overlooked investments, or investments made by another person for which they may be the rightful legal claimant. The registrars' FAQ puts it plainly, that the query can be used to check holdings for yourself or for anyone other than yourself.
So run it against your parent's PAN. You still log in with your own email and OTP.
Once a folio is identified as the deceased's, this stops being a discovery problem and becomes a transmission one, which is a different process with different paperwork. SEBI revised that framework with effect from 22 August 2026 and the documentation limits went up, so a holding that would have needed a succession certificate last year may not now. The route is set out on the transmission page, and the harder no-nominee case on its own page.