Cases of cyber crimes, including cheating the people through phone calls and forged net-banking transactions, occurring thick and fast in Uttarakhand, the officials dealing with cyber crime cases have suggested submission of Aadhar card be made mandatory for procuring SIM cards from the local outlets.
They say that the practice of telecom companies issuing SIM cards sans presentation of valid documents must be stopped to check cyber crimes from happening. In case producing Aadhar card is made mandatory for procuring SIM cards they would find it a bit easier to crack such crimes with most of the gangs involved in such crimes being based in the Maoists-infested areas of Jharkhand, Chhattisgarh, Maharashtra and Western Uttar Pradesh, the officials dealing with cyber crimes add. Uttarakhand police are really worried over increasing number of persons getting SIMs against forged documents, many senior cops say.
In the latest of the series of such crimes reported at the cyber crime police station based in Dehradun, an elderly person reached it on Wednesday morning to lodge a complaint of such a crime he was made a victim of. As per the complaint, he received a phone call from an unknown person identifying himself as a manager of a private bank and asking him to provide his ATM details to stop his ATM card from being invalidated. Scared, the complainant had done as he was asked to do, resulting in Rs 20, 000 being spirited away from his bank account a few minutes after the call. When he approached the officials concerned of the private bank they pleaded their helplessness to help him. Hence, he had approached the cyber crime police station, he said in the complaint.
STF Uttarakhand SSP P Renuka Devi said that complaints related to such fraudulent net- banking transactions are on the spiral in the state. “While reviewing such cases we have observed that fraudsters sitting in Jharkhand, Maharashtra and some other places are indulging in such crimes and what is worrisome is that they are collecting SIM cards from the retail outlets without submitting valid photo and documents along with their signature,” she added.
Citing an interesting case, another police officer said that following a complaint lodged, as a team of the cyber crime police reached Jharkhand to arrest the accused they were shocked finding that the accused was a illiterate villager stranger even to the operation of a mobile phone. “This is a clear instance of how the fraudsters are using fake documents to collect SIM cards,” he added. He further said that they were convinced following investigation of many such cases that the gangs engaged in such crimes are hiring tech- savvy IT professionals to carry on with such crimes. “Such IT professionals must be helping the gang members with the mobile numbers of the potential victims,” he said.
It is also learnt that Jharkhand is proving to be a safe haven for such gangs to operate, given the police there remaining preoccupied with dealing with the Maoist-triggered crimes.