The Government Railway Police (GRP) have busted a racket where three men were duping people by posing as bank executives and then using the money swindled from them to pay electricity and other bills for their neighbours in exchange for a commission.
Inquiries were initiated when Kalbadevi resident Priya Samrat filed a complaint with the Borivali GRP on December 20 last year. “Ms. Samrat was on a train when she received a call from a man posing as an executive with her bank. The man, after winning Ms. Samrat’s confidence, convinced her to reveal her Aadhaar and PAN, and a one time password that was sent to her phone even as the conversation was under way. It was only when ₹55,994 was deducted from her account that she realised she had fallen prey to a telecalling scam, and filed a complaint,” a GRP officer said.
The case was handed over to the GRP’s special task force (STF). The police found that the money had been transferred to e-wallets like Airtel Money and Vodafone m-Pesa. The police tracked the digital trail of money, which led them to Naresh Prasad, a resident of Panvel in Navi Mumbai. He was arrested on July 5.
“Mr. Prasad’s interrogation revealed that he had used the swindled money to pay electricity and cable connection bills. He confessed that he, along with two others, were running a racket where they would pay bill for people in their locality and take commissions from them,” the officer said.
An STF team left for Jharkhand and arrested two more accused, identified as Prabhu Mandal (28) and Krishna Mandal (20) on July 12.
All the three accused have been charged with cheating and impersonation under the Indian Penal Code, along with relevant sections of the Information Technology Act. The police are working on to find out how long the racket had been active, and how many people had been cheated by the trio.
