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Instant loan app racket: Rajasthan’s Akola village emerges as epicentre
An accused arrested in the instant loan app racket, during questioning, revealed that his entire village — Rajasthan’s Akola — was involved in the same crime
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Investigations into the instant loan app racket led police to Rajasthan’s Chittorgarh as a village in the district — Akola emerged as the epicentre for the scam.
Cybercrime team arrested two more persons, identified as Raj Vaishnav alias Raj King, 27, and Akram Mohammad, 30, both from the Rajasthan village. The former, during questioning, revealed that his entire village was involved in the same crime. He told police that the villagers provide China and Dubai-based criminals with account details used in the crime.
Speaking of the breakthrough, superintendent of police (SP, cyber), Chandigarh, Ketan Bansal said, “The investigations point that residents of Akola village are involved in providing account details to accused involved in cheating. We have arrested two persons from the village and three other residents of the village were held by Delhi police investigating a similar case of instant loan scam.”
“The residents of this village open bank accounts and sell the information further. Approximately ₹400 crore has been circulated in the instant loan scam.” These accounts are then operated by handlers sitting in Dubai and China,” he added.
During interrogation, the duo also disclosed that they used popular networking platforms like WhatsApp and Telegram to send out bank details and admitted to having furnished multiple accounts details to handlers in China and Dubai — Plumber, C Cherris.
It also came to light that the arrested accused and suspect Daksh Partap Singh, Ayush Agarwal were involved in laundering money and they dealt in cryptocurrency — sending money to China and Dubai through telegraphic transfer.
Police said Raj King managed a PNB account of a certain Life India through screen sharing app AirDroid. He has earlier been arrested for rape and gambling in Rajasthan.
Akram Mohammad, meanwhile, also managed and provided bank accounts the handlers.
“We have traced a trail where money is routed to China through Dubai. We have even traced an Indian number being used in Dubai and accused were communicating on this number,” police added.
So far, the police have arrested 31 persons in this case and ₹17.31 lakh of the cheated money. An additional ₹60 lakh has been held in bank accounts and 20 bank accounts have been frozen.
Akola, famous for its Dabu print, has around 400 households and is also popularly referred to as Chhipo Ka Akola, Chittorgarh.
