Three men from Mumbai, who were nabbed by the Panvel police with the help of the Mumbai Crime Branch over suspicion of their involvement in a cyber crime, turned out to be part of a different racket altogether.
In June, a Panvel resident lost around ₹1 lakh without even sharing any OTP with anyone. While investigating the case, the police came across Mudassir Shaikh (38), Rafiq Ansari (58) and Salman Ansari (27) from Mumbai, with the help of technical evidence.
Suspecting the three of being involved in the crime, the Panvel police, with the help of the Crime Branch and the V.B. Nagar police, detained them on August 25. “During the investigation, we found out that they were not the culprits in the case that we were investigating, but were involved in another racket, for which no FIR had been registered as the victims are not residents of India,” an officer privy to the investigations said.
The trio was running the scam with three others, who would steal debit and credit card details and share it with the accused. These three would then use the data to shop from various e-commerce websites.
After realising that there would be no complainant in the case, the Panvel police took suo motu cognisance and registered a case under Sections 420 (cheating) of the Indian Penal Code, and Section 66c (identity theft) of the IT Act.
The police are now on the lookout for the other three accused. “They were the ones who stole the data. Once they are arrested, we can get all the details on how they stole the data,” the officer added.
