Haryana Police crackdown on cybercriminals, 125 arrested

Gurugram, April 28 (IANS) In a major crackdown against cybercriminals involved in fraud, Haryana Police carried out multiple raids at cybercrime hot-spot areas in Nuh district.

102 teams of Haryana Police comprising more than 5,000 police personnel raided 300 locations in 14 villages in Nuh district late at night on Friday, and apprehended 125 cybercriminals.

During raids, the police seized a huge amount of gadgets including smartphones, laptops, Aadhaar cards, and ATM swipe machines along with other items.

DIG Special Task Force (STF) Simardeep Singh on Friday said that following the directives of DGP Haryana P.K. Agrawal, the police launched this operation against the cybercriminals.

He informed that after getting intelligence and other inputs related to cyber fraud in different areas of Nuh district, they conducted raids simultaneously with a massive police force.

For this operation, Haryana Police formed separate teams of more than 5,000 policemen, in which 1 SP, 6 Additional SPs, 14 DSPs and other policemen launched a massive crackdown against cyber offenders.

"The crackdown on cyber fraudsters was carried out by 102 police raiding parties. Different teams of police simultaneously raided 14 identified villages of Punhana, Pinangwa, Ferozepur Jhirka and Bichhore areas," Singh said.

The police first fixed the targets by mapping 14 villages considered to be hotspots of cybercrime in the district. Villages namely Khedla, Luhinga Khurd, Luhinga Kalan, Gokalpur, Godhola, Aminabad, Mahu, Gulalta, Jaimat, Jakhopur, Nai, Tirwara, Mamlika and Papda were identified as cybercrime hotspots and raids were carried out and since, April 8, 20 criminals involved in cyber fraud cases have already been arrested by the police in district Nuh," SP Nuh, Varun Singla said.

The highest number of 31 cyber criminals have been nabbed from Nai village, followed by 25 from Luhinga Kalan village, 20 each from Jaimat and Jakhopur, 17 each from Khedla and Tirwara, and 11 from Aminabad.

Police have also nabbed one criminal carrying a reward of Rs 10,000.

A total of 66 smartphones, 65 fake SIMs, 166 Aadhaar cards, 3 laptops, 128 ATM cards of different banks, 2 ATM swipe machines, 01 AEPS machine, 6 scanners, 5 PAN cards, etc. were recovered from the suspects.

7 country-made pistols, 2 cartridges, 2 cars, 4 tractor-trolleys and 22 motorcycles have also been recovered. The raids were conducted by the police targeting 69 accused involved in cyber and other criminal cases.

"In the initial investigation, the connection of the apprehended accused with cyber criminals of other states has also come to the fore, and further investigation in this regard is underway," Singh added.