Delhi Police arrest 5 for forging cheques to withdraw ₹8-cr

Delhi Police on Tuesday said they had busted an interstate gang that had allegedly withdrawn more than ₹8 crore from 14 bank accounts across the country by obtaining confidential details of account holders from bank officials.

Five men, including the alleged mastermind, were arrested in the past one week. At least four more suspects, including bank officials, have been identified. Raids are on to nab the suspects who may lead investigators to a bigger syndicate, police said.

The arrested men are Jitender Singh alias Jitu, the 37-year-old mastermind, Sunil Chhibber,58, Alok Kumar Trivedi,25, Mohammad Irshad Ali,29, and Arun Kumar Raghav,48. Three forged cheques, a printer and a laptop used for making the forged cheques and ₹6 lakh were recovered from them.

Police said the gang had prepared 18 forged cheques, 14 of which they used to withdraw around ₹8 crore in the last one-and-a-half years.

Deputy commissioner of police (crime) Rajesh Deo said investigation into a cheating and forgery case filed on the complaint of a woman from Delhi’s Laxmi Nagar, from whose account R1.10 crore was siphoned off in June, led to the racket.

On June 21, the woman was out of Delhi when services on her mobile phone stopped. When she returned to Delhi, the woman got a new SIM card issued for the same number. When mobile services resumed, the woman received a message regarding the transfer of Rs1.10 crore to two accounts in different banks in Gurugram and Vasant Kunj.

“Since the woman was in possession of the cheques used to transfer the money, it was suspected forged cheques were used for the illegal transactions. We registered a case,” DCP Deo said.

Investigators identified and apprehended one of the two accused persons, Alok Kumar Trivedi, hailing from Kanpur in Uttar Pradesh. “He revealed the names of two suspects – Mohammad Irshad Ali and Arun Kumar Raghav, who were also arrested. Their interrogation led to the arrest of Jitender Singh and Sunil Chhibber,” said an investigator, who is not authorised to speak to media.

Explaining the modus operandi, DCP Deo said the gang took the help of bank officials, who leaked confidential data of account holders who had huge amounts in their accounts but rarely operated it.

Singh told investigators that one Mehandi Hasan (yet to be arrested) was in touch with the bank officials and obtained “confidential data” of account holders such as their account number, IFSC code, copy of digital signature, residential address, mobile number registered with the bank, and details of the chequebook issued to them. The racketeers called the service provider of the account holder’s number and got the number disabled by giving different reasons.

“They called the bank concerned and got the registered contact number replaced with another cellphone number, which they procure using forged documents. This is to avoid the account holder from receiving transaction messages,” said another investigator.

Then they procured duplicate or blank cheque leafs through the bank officials and filled details of the account holder, including the signature. The forged cheque was used to transfer the amount into another account.