3 held for duping of people on pretext of renewing debit, credit cards

Three men were arrested for allegedly duping hundreds of people by seeking their bank account details on the pretext of renewing their credit and debit cards, police said today.

The accused were identified as Chandan Mandal (19), Manoj Hari (29) and Pappu Kumar Singh (27), they said.

On July 10, a man lodged a police complaint saying that two days back he had received a call from a person pretending to be an SBI employee seeking his card details.

After he did so, the complainant found out that Rs 50,000 was deducted from his bank account, Additional Commissioner of Police (crime) Ajit Kumar Singla said.

During the investigation, police found that the amount was transferred into bank accounts and online wallets in Punjab, Jharkhand and West Bengal.

On questioning some members of the racket already arrested and electronic surveillance of the caller, Mandal was arrested from Jamtara in Jharkhand while two of his accomplices Hari and Singh were held from Burdwan in West Bengal on August 21, the officer said.

During interrogation, Mandal told police that masquerading as bank staff they used to make calls from Jharkhand seeking from people information about their debit and credit cards on the pretext of renewing those, Singla said.

They then used transfer the amounts to their online wallets opened using SIM registered on fake IDs, he said.

Seven mobile phones, 21 SIM cards, 11 ATM Cards, six bank passbooks, three checkbooks and a WiFi router were seized from them, police said, adding a further investigation into the case is underway.

(This story has not been edited by Devdiscourse staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)