Pakistani syndicate busted, eight held for cheating

Eight members of a Pakistan-based syndicate have been arrested for cheating several people to the tune of lakhs of rupees by ensnaring them in a lottery scheme, police here said Monday.

Police said the group would target Indian nationals through telephone calls.

They would trap people by pretending to be calling on behalf of call centres associated with the television programme "Kaun Banega Carorepati", hosted by actor Amitabh Bachchan.

The victims were informed that they had won a lottery running into Rs.20-30 lakh based upon the selection of their cell phone number in a random draw and the prize would be paid to them on the sets of "Kaun Banega Crorepati".

"Interested people would then be called up by a Pakistani number to pay a percentage of the lottery amount won by him for processing the claim. To make the scam look real, the fraudsters then gave details of an Indian bank account to the victim to deposit the processing fee," Deputy Commissioner of Police (Special Cell) Rajiv Ranjan said.

As soon as the victim deposited the money in the given bank account, it would be withdrawn by the Indian associate of the syndicate.

"The syndicate opened several bank accounts to collect money," the official said.

The official suspects that the money siphoned off from India to Pakistan-based criminals could get diverted for anti-India activities.

"We received such a complaint Oct 7 from a Delhi resident," he said.

Umer Ali, 36, Rakesh Raut, 30, Ahmad Hussain, 23, Vikas Kumar Sah, 22, Saroj Kanta Sutar, 22, Mahendra Kumar Singhal, 57, Naresh Bansal, 38, and Ravi Kumar Gupta, 43, have been arrested over the past week since Oct 13.

Cash of Rs.4.1 lakh, 134 ATM cards of different banks, about 300 bank slips, 10 mobile phones, a register for maintaining records of transactions and pass books of various banks have also been recovered from their possession.