The Chittoor police on Wednesday arrested a member of a cyber crime gang based in Uttar Pradesh, after bringing him here on a transit warrant from Noida. About 20 gang members are elusive, while special parties have been formed to nab them.
Deputy SP (Law and Order) N. Sudhakar Reddy told the media that one Sandip Kishan (45), a senior assistant working with Government Hospital in Chittoor, and his wife Latha had taken some life insurance policies with four nationalised banks and a couple of private firms. During the last two years, they could not pay the premiums due to a lack of sufficient funds owing to the COVID pandemic.
Three months ago, the couple started getting repeated phone calls from strangers, who introduced themselves as officials of the Reserve Bank of India (RBI). The accused who had access to the information about the couple’s policies and numbers reportedly convinced the duo, saying that they could redeem the amount paid for taking policies along with interest. To get back their money, the couple were reportedly asked to pay the GST, and some left out installments of premiums. The couple transferred ₹23 lakh over 36 transactions to several account numbers. As there was no response from the callers later, the
couple contacted the bank officials concerned and soon realised that they were conned by the fraudsters.
The Deputy SP said that acting on a complaint from the couple in the first week of December, a 15-member special party was formed to probe the case. Based on preliminary information, the origin of the calls were detected at Noida in Uttar Pradesh. “After a week-long grueling investigation there, our team could detect the involvement of about 20 accused in the crime. We also suspect the gang’s role in several such crimes all over India,” Mr. Reddy said.
Their modus operandi was to identify poor people and make them open bank accounts, which would be kept under their (gang’s) control. Their targets would be made to deposit the amounts in the manipulated accounts. The accused included commission agents and some youth clandestinely recruited to make conversation with their targets.
“At present, we could arrest one accused, Sailendra Singh (25) of Noida,. We have credible leads in the case, including information about the kingpins, and further arrests would be made,” the official said.
