CID arrests another person in lottery racket

The CID of West Bengal Police Monday arrested another person from the city in connection with his alleged involvement with a Pakistan-based racket that conned people with fake lottery schemes, a senior officer of the agency said.

Farhan Khan, a resident of Bihar, was arrested from his Park Circus residence on Monday morning by the Criminal Investigation Department, taking the total number of people arrested by the CID to three, he said.

"Farhan worked as an agent of Pakistani racketeers and ran a network of agents to withdraw money from different accounts for onwards transmission of the money," the officer told PTI.

"We are trying to find out who else he was connected to in this racket," he said.

The state CID had earlier arrested two officials of a Bangladesh-based Pran Beverages (India) Private Ltd - director Rajesh Ghosh and sales administration manager Bidhan Kirtaniya after they were found to have received money from the racket, the officer said.

Acting on a suo motu case registered at Egra police station in East Midnapore district on January 13, the CID found that the racket had been duping people in the state as well in other parts of the country.

During investigation it was found that money collected from people were sent to Pakistan through hawala channels.

The racketeers would call up people via phone or Whatsapp from numbers starting with +92 or 0092 to tell them that they have won a huge amount of money in lottery, which would be transferred to them on payment of processing fees.

Soon after the fees were deposited in the bank account, it was withdrawn by agents here in India. They then sent the money to Pakistan after routing it through Dubai, the officer added.