Despite police having pompously opened a cyber crime cell to deal with cyber crimes committed through internet, ATM and net banking, they are passing the buck to the non-cooperative bank officials when it comes to cracking such crimes. The cases related to fraudulent withdrawal of money from the bank accounts of customers are on the rise and the police department is finding it difficult to identify the frauds, let alone, cracking such cases.
This pass-the-buck game being indulged in by the cops spawns several questions. First, are the bank officials bound to part with the required information to policeIJ If not, then what the cyber crime cell is all aboutIJ Does it imply that either the bank officials concerned are shielding the criminals or they themselves are involvedIJ
Several fraudulent cases have been reported in cyber cell, Dehradun SSP office and Special Task Force (STF), Uttarakhand, but the bank officials are not providing relevant information to the police. In such cases, neither police nor bank officials tend to help the complainants. A woman police personal posted at SSP office said that around ten complaints of fraudulent withdrawal of money from the bank accounts have been reported over the past one month.
She pleaded helplessness, citing that the bank officials are not providing relevant information though over a month has passed since things came into light. STF, Uttarakhand officials also echoed the same, saying the bank officials are not helping the probes. A vegetable vendor Kamlesh Gupta has been running from pillar to post over the past several months after a sum of Rs68,000 was withdrawn from his account by unknown persons.
Sharing his plight, Gupta said, “I have bank account in Sate Bank of India, Race Course, Dehradun. I had kept around Rs81,640 in the account. On January 11, I had withdrawn Rs5,000. At 1.30 pm on February 14, someone had withdrawn around Rs76,000 from the account. Rs52.64 was left in the account. I had approached the bank but the bank officials did not help me. They advised me to register a case in the police station. I again reached ATM centre and checked the account. I found Rs8,000 was deposited by unidentified persons. I quickly withdrew Rs8,000 from the account. I have thus lost Rs68,000 from my account. I wonder how I would get back my hard-earned money thus lost. I had neither handed over my ATM card nor disclosed its ATM pin number to anyone else.”
Ironically, a few hours after Kamlesh visited the bank somebody deposited Rs8000 cash in his account. This aside, the accused recharged his mobile through his ATM. Despite all this, police are stumbling in the dark. A customer of a bank who is scared of being robbed thus by the cyber criminals said if police fail to lodge complaint against the bank, tagging non-cooperation charge to them, the cyber crime cell would be reduced to a cipher, shorn of tooth and claw to come down heavily on such criminals. “Better they should wind up the cell to spare them the ignominy of failing to drill information out of the bank officials,” the worried Dehradun resident said.