Pratapgarh police bust gang of cyber fraudsters, three held

The Pratapgarh police arrested three persons from Delhi and busted a gang of cyber fraudsters targeting customers of Bank of Baroda branches in Pratapgarh.

Satpal Antil, superintendent of police, Pratapgarh, said that the three arrested members of the gang have been identified as Ashiq aka Aryan Sharma of Sangam Vihar, New Delhi, Surendra Singh aka Balram Singh of East of Kailash, South Delhi and Arun Kumar aka Abhinav Gupta alias Arun Bharadwaj hailing from Haridwar, Uttarakhand but currently residing at Nand Nagri, East Delhi.

Police claimed that these fraudsters, with the help of some bank personnel of the Bank of Baroda, used to get a list of bank accounts whose phone numbers were not linked to bank accounts and from that list select some bank accounts in which a large amount of money was deposited.

Then using fake cheque books prepared in the name of these accounts, the fraudsters used to transfer the money. They even obtained the signatures against these cheques used by the holders of such accounts as well as other details, so that they could now present the fake cheques on behalf of the genuine account holders, police officials shared.

The SP Pratapgarh said that following the busting of the gang and their modus operandi by the police team led by ASP Amrit Jain, the Bank of Baroda has removed the shortcomings in the banking system and has made a major change in the rules of transactions from cheques to secure large amounts of money deposited in the accounts of account holders.

A number of complaints had been received recently at police stations of Pratapgarh from victims that led to the police focusing their attention on busting this gang, officials said.

Records show that an FIR was registered on May 27, on the complaint of fake transfer of ₹11,74,100 from the account of one account holder of Bank of Baroda’s Derwa branch, located under the Jethwara police station area.

Another FIR was lodged on June 9, on the basis of a complaint received in the case of fraudulent transfer of ₹17,65,600 by cloning cheques of the account holder of Bank of Baroda’s Derwa branch.

Similarly, an FIR was registered on June 10, regarding fraudulent transfer of ₹34,07,500 while on June 11 too an FIR was registered in the case of fraudulently transferring of ₹35 lakh on May 1, by cloning a cheque of an account holder of Bank of Baroda’s Belha branch, located under the jurisdiction of police station Kotwali Nagar.

On June 18, too, an FIR was registered over the fake transfer of ₹25 lakh from the account of one account holder of Bank of Baroda’s Belha branch.

The investigation and arrest by the Pratapgarh police team has been appreciated by the director general of police, UP. Additional director general of police, Prayagraj Zone, Bhanu Bhaskar, has declared a citation and a prize of ₹25,000 for the commendable work done by the team.