In a major breakthrough, Dehradun Police busted an inter-State gang involved in stealing cheques from banks and later withdrawing rupees worth thousands after erasing names and amounts and writing new names and amounts. Police arrested two out of seven members of the gang on Wednesday.
The accused have been identified as Nitin Chauhan and Mohammad Ashif, natives of Bijnor (Uttar Pradesh). SSP Sadanand Date said that team has been formed to arrest the remaining gang members.
Police acted after Alok Kumar Tyagi, resident of Haridwar, registered a complaint at Dalanwala police station, stating that he had dropped two cheques in the cheque box of OBC Bank on Rajpur Road. These cheques had disappeared from the box and money was deposited in someone’s bank account. Acting on the complaint, a case under appropriate sections of IPC was registered against unidentified persons in the police station, Dalanwala.
SSP Date formed a team to investigate the case. Investigation revealed that crime of such nature was also held under the police station areas of Nehru Colony, Rishikesh in Dehradun district and Ranipur in Haridwar.
Further investigation revealed that the gang employed the same modus operendi of spiriting away the cheques and erasing names and amounts and writing new ones.
Team members investigated to find that the accused had used false identity cards to open bank accounts and mobile SIM cards. However, the photos pasted on the accounts were the right ones.
Acting on a tip- off, police arrested two members of the gang from Dhampur on Tuesday. The accused were grilled and they revealed that seven members are working in the gang involved in the crimes. They are Sonupal, Amit, Nitin, Ashif Kalpana, Nadim and Mukesh.
The accused admitted to have opened several bank accounts with forged documents at Dehradun, Haridwar and Delhi.
Interrogation further revealed that two of the above accused used to reach the banks and engaged the officials in talks while they stole cheques from the box. Several cases have been registered against the accused in various police stations of Dehradun and Haridwar and other places in the past, police probing the case said.