The day the new DGP has taken charge from his predecessor, the State Police claimed to have cracked the ATM cloning cases involving around 100 complainants by identifying three accused — all from Haryana — and seizing and freezing an account the accused operated to stack the ill-gotten money.
The account contained an amount of Rs 34 lakh. Informing this, the state additional director general of police (law and order) Ram Singh Meena said while addressing a Press conference on Monday that the accused trio has been identified as Rambeer, Sudesh and Jagmohan, all natives of Jhajhar in Haryana.
“They are now on the run. They would be arrested soon. We have already sent a STF team led by Ajay Singh, additional SP, to Haryana to arrest them,” he said.
Sources privy to the police headquarters said that the accused had opened a bank account with Rs 1,000 in the name of a woman on July 4 in a branch at Jhajhar in Haryana.
Meena said that pictures of a woman had been found in the CCTV footages. “We are however yet to identity her. Besides, we believe that some more persons are involved in the ATM cloning cases. As per the evidences, the skimmers were placed in the ATM kiosks between July 1 and July 8. The accused went first to Jaipur to fraudulently withdraw money from ATMs through cloning so far. Though RTGS, a total of Rs 34 lakh was deposited in the above account. The account has been seized and the amount has been frozen with the help of the bank officials. The victims would be given their lost money back soon,” he said.
He also said that with 96 cases on fraudulent withdrawals from their accounts being reported from various police stations based in the state capital till Monday, the total amount being allegedly spirited away was around Rs 30 lakh.
STF Uttarakhand SSP Riddhim Aggarwal said that several teams from local police stations, SOG, STF and cyber police stations aside from some cyber experts had been pressed to crack such cases. Dehradun SSP Nivedita Kukreti was also present when Meena disclosed the case being cracked.