New Delhi, Sep 6 (IANS) Carrying forward its nationwide crackdown on digital arrest crimes under Operation Chakra-VI, the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) arrested five accused involved in receiving, layering and dispersing the fraud proceeds running into crores of rupees, an official said on Sunday.
The fresh arrests were a follow-up to the recent coordinated searches at 89 locations spanning 20 states across the country in three major cases of digital arrest reported in Rajasthan, Gujarat and Karnataka, the official said in a statement.
With these arrests, the total number of persons apprehended in these cases rose to eight, the CBI said, adding that efforts were underway to track down and apprehend the remaining accused involved in the wider network.
The five accused were identified as: Sanket Bastwar, Pankaj Damade, Arif alias King Bhai, Harish Purushottam Yadav alias Harry and Shashank Singh alias Ravi, the CBI said.
The federal agency added that Sanket Bastwar and Pankaj Damade, both from Itarsi in Madhya Pradesh, deceitfully obtained a bank account, accepted the proceeds of the ‘Digital Arrest’ into it, and actively participated in dispersing the money to obscure its trail.
“Arif alias King Bhai, Harish Purushottam Yadav alias Harry (New Delhi) and Shashank Singh alias Ravi (Uttar Pradesh’s Ghaziabad) were all involved in arranging the bank account used to receive the money from the victim of ‘Digital Arrest’ and to further layer it across multiple accounts,” the CBI said.
Arif, Harish and Shashank were also found to have installed a malicious apk file on the account holder’s mobile phone, through which they intercepted the bank’s SMS alerts to covertly operate the account, the CBI added.
Investigation is now revealing the elaborate organised network which these persons were part of and how the entire money movement was carried out by the network, it said.
The CBI had earlier mounted a major offensive against the syndicates behind the menace of digital arrest, launching coordinated searches at 89 locations spanning 20 states across the country in three major cases, acting on the directions of the Supreme Court.
The apex court had taken serious note of the alarming scale of these crimes and directed the CBI to act decisively against the perpetrators and the wider networks facilitating such offences.
“Of the three cases in which these coordinated searches were conducted, one pertained to BITS Pilani, where the victim was kept under digital arrest for three months and defrauded of Rs 7.67 crore by scammers impersonating police officers,” the CBI said.
In the case from Gujarat, the victim was similarly held under digital arrest for three months and defrauded of Rs 19.24 crore.
The third case from Karnataka involved a victim digitally arrested for a month and defrauded of Rs 15.45 crore, the CBI said.
“These searches had earlier led to the arrest of three accused — Akash of Haryana, who received Rs 1.95 crore of the defrauded amount into an account he had himself opened and swiftly moved onward the same day; Raja Karmakar of Kolkata, into whose firm’s account Rs 1.5 crore of the fraud proceeds was routed; and Jyoti Rani, who withdrew part of the credited proceeds in cash and transferred the remainder onward — establishing their direct and knowing roles in laundering the fraud proceeds,” the CBI added.
–IANS
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