Nine members of a gang, including five of a family and a woman constable, involved in ATM theft were arrested in Malkangiri district on Thursday.
Two laptops, three data cards, four mobile phones, 50 sim cards, many ATM cards (fake and original of various banks), 16 cheque books of various banks, passbooks and land documents were seized from them. There are around 50 members of the gang and two of them had been arrested in May this year from the district.
The arrest was made after the police raided some places in MV 16 village on the basis of CCTV camera footage provided by the Delhi and Baroda police. The arrested persons included the alleged leader of the gang Haridas Biswas of MV 16, who was working in a private company in Delhi. He had come in contact with many bank employees and gathered all software knowledge about functioning of ATMs, the police said.
In 2006, he started the gang and appointed agents in every district of Odisha. The gang members were withdrawing money from ATMs with the help of fake cards, the police said. Biswas himself had drawn Rs 1,25,72,000 and invested it in purchase of land and other things during 2011-13. The gang members have siphoned about Rs 50 crore from different places so far. Apart from Haridas, his father Harabila Biswas, mother Subhadra, sister and constable Basanti, sister Jayanti and gang members Tapas Poddar, Brahmahananda Talukdar, Satyajit Sarkar, Rajesh Patnaik (advocate) were arrested.