Madhya Pradesh: Four students share bank account with digital arrest gang to earn commission, arrested

Four college students teamed up with a gang that duped people by intimidating them under the pretext of a “digital arrest”.

Published on: Dec 17, 2024, 23:04:31 IST

By HT News Desk

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The Madhya Pradesh police on Tuesday arrested four college students from the state who allegedly let the “digital arrest” gang use their bank account in exchange for a “commission” from money earned through the crime.

The case relates to a 59-year-old woman from Indore who was duped by a gang of ₹1.60 crore. (Representative image) (HT file)

Rajesh Kumar Tripathi, Crime Branch's Deputy Commissioner of Police (DCP), said that the students lent the details of their bank accounts to a gang, which duped people by intimidating them under the pretext of a “digital arrest”.

The accused students have been identified as Rohan Shakya, Ayush Rathore, Nilesh Gorele and Abhishek Tripathi. Shakya and Rathore are residents of Sehore, while Gorele and Tripathi hail from Bhopal. The DCP said that one is a B Tech (computer science) student, and two others are students of Bachelor of Business Administration (BBA) course.

Also read | Alert bank manager, quick police action foil ‘digital arrest’ scam

About ₹15 lakh, earned by the gang by duping innocent people, was transferred to Shakya's bank account, out of which ₹10 lakh was withdrawn. Police arrested Shakya on suspicion after ₹5 lakh from a suspicious transaction was found in his account. Shakya, upon interrogation, informed them about three more students in his network.

How the students earned a commission?

Police found that Shakya opened a bank account and made it available to his companion Rathore to collect their commission from online fraudsters. Rathore shared the account details with Gorele, who, in turn, did the same to their partner Tripathi. Police have now stopped transactions into Shakya's bank account.

Also read | Blocked 1,700 Skype IDs, 59,000 WhatsApp accounts used for ‘digital arrests’

“The gang members take complete control of the bank accounts after acquiring them on a commission basis. Even the person in whose name the account has been opened does not come to know later what kind of transactions are taking place through this account,” the DCP said.

The case relates to a 59-year-old woman from Indore who was duped by a gang of ₹1.60 crore.

(With PTI inputs)

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