Debit card fraud: Three from Navy duped of Rs3 lakh

Two officers and one personnel of the Indian Navy recently fell prey to debit card cloning and lost nearly Rs3 lakh, withdrawn using cloned cards in China and Bihar. Police have booked unidentified suspects for the crime.

In both cases, the naval officers were on duty at sea and did not receive SMS alerts of these transactions owing to the lack of mobile network.

During the first week of this month, sub-lieutenant G Sarveshwar Rao, 31, who lives in the Western Naval Command quarters in Colaba, approached the Colaba police and complained that ₹2.53 lakh went missing from his account between April 17 and 21. Rao said that his account statement showed 14 unauthorised withdrawals had occurred in Bihar in this period.

Around the same time, Navin Kumar, 25, a loading seaman with the Navy, also complained he lost ₹22,000 in a similar fraud. The police incorporated both complaints into one FIR.

Police officers, who did not wish to be named, said the gang behind this fraud also deposited ₹40,000 stolen from another person into Rao’s account before withdrawing it.

On June 12, naval sub-lieutenant Anup Chandran Chandrakumar, 26, who also lives in the WNC quarters, complained that he had lost ₹35,000 via unauthorised transactions from his bank account. Through his account statements, he discovered that these withdrawals had happened somewhere in China.

Colaba police booked FIRs against unidentified suspects under relevant sections of IPC Information Technology Act.