Six members of an international gang involved in fraud and money-laundering, have been arrested for allegedly making extortion calls to four Haryana MLAs. The phone calls to the MLAs were made between June 24-28, and traced to Middle East.
The accused, arrested by Haryana Special Task Force teams during raids in Mumbai and Bihar, have been identified as: Dulesh Alam, Badre Alam, Amit Yadav, Sanoj Kumar, Saddiq Anwar and Kash Alam. The STF claimed to have seized 55 debit cards, 24 mobile phones, 56 SIM cards, 22 cheque books and ₹3,97,000 in cash.
Political controversy
The extortion calls to the MLAs, including Congress legislators, had snowballed into a political controversy with the Opposition accusing the BJP-JJP government of deteriorating law and order situation in the State.
Mr. Satish Balan, IGP, STF, said the accused were not part of any terror organisation, but the extortion calls were routed through around ten Pakistani residents, who were also part of the gang. The accused had also made similar calls to former Punjab MLAs.
Modus operandi
The gang would entice the poor with a few thousand rupees to open the bank accounts in their names, but kept the documents with them. The gang members would procure SIM cards against fake IDs to operate these accounts. The calls were made from outside India luring the victims with the prospects of winning a lottery or issuing them threats, and they were directed to deposit the money in the bank accounts operated by the gang, said Mr. Balan.
Dulesh and Alam would then withdraw money from these accounts, using debit cards.
Trap laid
The Special Investigation Team carrying out probe into the extortion calls to the MLAs, laid a trap to receive calls from the gang, and sought details of the bank accounts to deposit the money. Two teams simultaneously carried out raids in Mumbai and Bihar to track the account numbers, leading to the arrests.
Haryana Home Minister Anil Vij, in a tweet, congratulated the STF over the arrests.
