Patelnagar police has arrested three accused in the Automated Teller Machine (ATM) fraud case. During interrogation, the accused said that they used to target those people who were either from rural background and had less knowledge about technology or those people who had little idea about ATM process. Police have also recovered 200 ATM cards, Rs 1,70,000, one microwave that accused had purchased through online shopping, one private car and two illegal firearms from the accused.
The accused have been identified as Gyanendra, a resident of Shahdara, Delhi, Amit, a native of Ghaziabad and Kaleem Begh, a resident of Uttar Pradesh.
According to the information provided by the police, on September 4, Dinesh Chandra Pandey filed a complaint stating that Rs 2,06,643 were stolen from his account using his ATM card. A similar complaint was filed by Kailash Chandra at Patelnagar police station on September 15 about Rs 24,500 having been stolen from his bank account.
Dehradun Senior Superintendent of Police (SSP) Arun Mohan Joshi said, “The accused Gyanendra is the mastermind of the group. All three of them basically came here to travel, but then they planned this. During interrogation, they said that first they used to target an ATM which has a crowd around, and then they used to stand nearby.
The target victim was the one who looked unsure of using ATM or old people, who need assistance. So, they used to pretend that they are assisting and used to swap original ATM cards with their fake ones and then pretend that the ATM is not working. In this way, they used to get the original card and the password, which they either see when the card-holder is entering on the machine and in some cases the card-holder themselves used to tell them the password.”
He further added, “The police team did a commendable job. They first checked all the CCTV footage of the crime scenes and then tried to pin point any common thing.
Thus, the private car that they were using was identified. From there, they did further investigation and they were arrested.”
It is pertinent to mention here that accused Gyanendra already has a murder case filed against him in Ghaziabad. The police are collecting information about the criminal history of all the three accused.
