Five held for siphoning off Rs 1.35 cr from NRI's account

New Delhi, Oct 19 (IANS) The Delhi Police have busted a gang that used to siphon off money from bank accounts containing large amounts of money, an official said here on Tuesday.

According to the police, a case under section 420 of the Indian Penal Code was registered last year at Rajinder Nagar police station on the complaint of a NRI residing in Germany.

The complainant had alleged that in November, 2020 she tried to log into her bank account, but access was denied for want of the correct password. After she approached the bank officials, she learnt that her fixed deposits had been liquidated and an amount of Rs 1.35 crore had been fraudulently withdrawn through online transfer, cheque and ATM withdrawals.

The bank officials said that a fresh cheque book and new ATM card were issued against her account lately. The officials informed the complainant that the new cheque book and ATM card were received by a person who introduced himself as Vishal, brother of the complainant.

The complainant said that she had not made any request to issue a cheque book or ATM card to the bank. Moreover, she has no siblings.

Based on her complaint, the police began a probe and the culprit was identified as Sumit Pandey, an employee of the bank. He was later apprehended and subjected to interrogation during which he revealed that he accessed the details of the complainant's account by taking advantage of his official position at ICICI bank and got to know than an amount of Rs 1.35 cr was lying in the account.

The police said Pandey then passed on the information about the complainant's bank account to Shailendra Pratap Singh, the kingpin of the syndicate, who hatched a conspiracy to siphon off the money from the complainant's account.

Shailendra arranged an office at Badkhal Chowk, Faridabad, for a fake company named Workforce India Pvt. Ltd. under the guise of supplying labourers to big construction companies. He deputed two of his associates, Jagdamba Prasad Pandey and Rahul, as managers. They eventually hired around 10 odd labourers for the company and made them open their bank accounts in Equitas Small Finance Bank, AU Small Finance Bank, HDFC Bank and ICICI Bank.

Shailendra then got the registered mobile number of the complainant's account reissued in the name of one such labourer and installed the internet banking facility of the victim's account on this SIM. The registered number was reissued to the alleged persons as it was not in use for 3 months and for this reason it went into inactivated mode. He collected ATM cards and cheque books of these labourers. After that, they started withdrawing amounts through the ATM card of complainant Kanika Girdhar and transferred the money to the accounts of the labourers and withdrew the entire amount through ATMs.

After these withdrawals, only Rs 63 was left in the account. The police said the offenders were so desperate that they deposited Rs 37 to take the total remaining amount to Rs 100 and withdrew the Rs 100 also. After that, they locked the rented office and disappeared.

The accused have been identified as Sumit Pandey, a resident of Lal Kuan, Ghaziabad in UP, Shailendra Pratap Singh, resident of Shastri Nagar, Neelam of Gurugram, Jagdamba Prasad Pandey, a resident of Mau district in UP and Adarsh Jaiswal, resident of Azamgarh district in UP.

The accused had spent a lot of the money as the police recovered benami property worth Rs 41 lakh, a Tata Nexon car, a Royal Enfield motorcycle, two Apple I phones, and Rs 27 lakh cash.