Cyber crime sleuths of Chandigarh Police have arrested two more persons in connection with the ₹20-lakh fraud with a retired police inspector last year.
While Soumodeep Sarkar and Sita Ram were arrested in January this year, their aides Rohit Sharma and Tasim Husain have also landed in police net. All four are from West Bengal.
Police said after the arrest of Sarkar and Sita Ram, it came to light that the money was transferred to an IDFC Bank account and was used to pay credit card bills. These credit cards were being used by Rohit and Tasim. A raid followed and the duo was arrested from Kolkata recently.
Police said the gang used to call unwary people over WhatsApp, alarming them with the possibility of their pension and other allowances being held up, as their documents had not been uploaded in the treasury. They would then send weblinks to the victims to gain access to their mobile phones.
The accused would then port the victim’s mobile number to a different service provider and used that mobile number to withdraw money from the bank account linked with that number.
Among their victims was retired inspector Birender Singh, a resident of Kishangarh, who had filed a complaint in December 2023. The accused had called the former cop posing as treasury officers, and fraudulently withdrawn ₹18.81 lakh and ₹1.94 lakh from his two bank accounts.