4 arrested for cheating people after posing as RBI officials

Four men were arrested for allegedly duping people by posing as officials from the Reserve Bank of India and gaining details of their bank accounts, the police said today.

On March 13, a complaint was submitted by a 78-year-old woman in which she stated that she received a call from an unknown number and the person pretended to be an employee from the RBI, they added.

The employee stated that her bank account was to be linked with Aadhaar card. She shared her ATM card details along with the OTP received at her registered mobile phone.

After sometime, when she checked messages, she found that an amount of Rs 1.85 lakh have been deducted from her two PNB accounts, the police said.

During investigation, details were obtained from the bank concerned and it was found that the fraudster had transferred the amount to different e-wallets.

Police were successful in getting an amount of Rs 40,777 reverted into the complainant's account from some of the e-wallets.

During verification from e-wallet merchants, it came to notice that several electricity bills against Jodhpur Vidyut Vitran Nigam Ltd. had been paid through them.

On verification from Jodhpur Vidyut Vitran Nigam Ltd., it was revealed that all bills had been paid from an E-Mitra counter, one of the private counters opened by the government of Rajasthan for the purpose of public friendly digital governance, situated at AEN Office Sardarshahar in Churu district in Rajasthan.

In this regard, Surendar Singh was arrested and he revealed that he used to take cash from electricity users to pay their bills but the details of the bills used to be sent in bulk through e-mail and WhatsApp to his associate Shabir Ali after deducting his five per cent commission from the collected amount, the police said.

The money used to be transferred to Ali who would send all the customer details to Purnanand Kr Tiwari alias Mukesh Kr. Tiwari for the online electricity payment by using the cheated amount available, the police said.

The details of the alleged e-wallets used to be given to him by the gang leader, Ram Kumar Mandal alias Sitaram Mandal.

Subsequently, Ali was arrested from Sri Dungargarh in Bikaner, said Nupur Prasad, Deputy Commissioner of Police (Shahdara). A team was sent to Jharkhand in the search of Tiwari but it emerged that he was operating his gang from Jamui in Bihar. Subsequently, the main accused and his accomplices were arrested.