Most south Indians either fear or respect police officers — based on this premise four persons from Rajasthan, including a juvenile, made ₹ 4.5 lakh in about 75 days.
They targeted 350 police officers from Telangana, Andhra Pradesh, Tamil Nadu, Karnataka, and a few from Patna, Prayagraj and Himachal Pradesh and created Facebook accounts in the names of these police officers.
“The accounts are a look-alike with personal and office photos, and updated bio-data. They would send new friend requests, and start conversations asking for money. Some officers did send the money as requested, over Google pay or Phone pay numbers,” Nalgonda SP A.V. Ranganath, who was a near-victim of such transaction, said, producing the accused before media on Saturday.
On September 18, Mr. Ranganath’s friend alerted him, asking if he needed a mobile transfer of ₹ 20,000 to his wife’s number, as requested on Facebook. The number, data and the request appeared to have originated in Odisha, but was later proved false.
An investigation team that went to Rajasthan, following the cyber-trail, suspected a few persons in Kaithwara police station limits.
“Everyone was a suspect, but with the most-used SIM card in a phone, in relation with other suspicious numbers and tower locations, a few phones were narrowed down and suspects taken into custody. The breakthrough came when one of their phone galleries showed images of SP Ranganath and other police officers apart from screenshots of Facebook chats,” investigating officer S.M. Basha said.
According to Mr. Basha, the youth took to Facebook, after their earlier tricks on e-commerce portals like OLX did not fetch results and the customers had turned cautious.
“They are not victims of police abuse or do not have any such thing against the police officials. They said that they had picked up the group of police officers as there is sympathy among the public towards police because they serve people and further, the police officials also command fear, they believed that these reasons would work in their favour. And transaction amounts too were not high,” another officer A. Rajasekhar Reddy said.
Police said the members of the gang had purchased pre-activated and account-linked SIM cards, bank accounts with passbook and ATM card, from rural areas at ₹ 3000 per set. The investigation team was able to seize ₹ 1 lakh cash, 30 SIM cards, phones and laptop, and fake documents. And further information is being extracted at a forensic science laboratory.
Accused Mustaqeen, Sayeed and Saddam were booked for forgery, cheating, impersonation and under sections of the Information Technology Act. The minor would be produced before the Juvenile Justice Board.
