Four steal bank accounts on pretext of paying bills, in custody

PUNE: Four men were arrested for stealing the bank data of a set of customers in order to pay the electricity bills of another set of people from whom they had already collected cash for the purpose

PUNE: Four men were arrested for stealing the bank data of a set of customers in order to pay the electricity bills of another set of people from whom they had already collected cash for the purpose. According to the police, the operation left people, whose data was thus compromised, with gaping holes in their bank accounts.

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Assistant public prosecutor Maithili Kalvit of Shivajinagar court said that the four men have been remanded to police custody till July 26. Meanwhile, the police know of at least four people who collectively lost ₹514,841 to the men suspected to be part of a larger nexus.

One such complainant, Jyoti Shinde, 53, who is a resident of the Law college road area, lost ₹514,841 to the accused. Three other people have suffered similar consequences after the accused allegedly made them download mirroring applications which provided remote access to the accused.

The police have identified the arrested accused as Virbhadrasingh Dharmendrasingh Jhala, 29, a resident of Bhavnagar in Gujarat; Mehul Zaverbhai Kakdia, 28, a resident of Surat in Gujarat; Yash Bharatbhai Bhuptani, 24, a resident of Amreli in Gujarat; and Jitendra Teklal Mandal, 35, a resident of Giridih in Jharkhand.

The modus operandi of the arrested accused was to take cash from one set of people under the pretext of paying their electricity bills while stealing money from the bank accounts of another set of people, according to the police submission in court.

Police inspector Kumar Ghadge of the cyber police station who is investigating the case said, “The electricity distributor in Gujarat is a private entity. They paid the electricity bills of local businessmen in advance and showed the receipts to them and took the same amount of cash from them. This way, the businessmen got the benefit of advance payment, the accused got untraceable hard cash, and the people whose bank account details had been compromised, were left in a lurch.”

A case under sections 419 (impersonation) and 420 (cheating) of the Indian Penal Code, along with sections 66(c) and 66(d) of the Information Technology Act was registered at the cyber police station. The police is on the lookout for any previous cases registered against the arrested accused and the kingpin of the racket.