The Chandigarh Police arrested two people for fraudulently withdrawing Rs. 1.33 crore from the Non-Residential Ordinary (NRO) account of a U.S.-based NRI.
Both the arrested are from Ujjain in Madhya Pradesh, the Indian Express reported.
Mahesh Malli and Rajesh Upadhaya were arrested on Dec. 5 for illegal withdrawal of money from the account of Dr. Ajay Sood, who lives in California.
According to the newspaper, the two are the members of an interstate gang that was involved in fraudulent transfers of crores of rupees from several bank accounts in Gurgaon, Delhi, MP, and Punjab. In Chandigarh, the gang was involved in two cases, one of which belonged to Dr. Sood. The gang members withdrew around Rs 1.87 crore from his account.
Both Malli and Upadhaya were taken to the district courts, Sector 17, on production warrants by the MP Police and later, the UT Police arrested them. They were remanded in six-day police custody. In MP, they were lodged in Ujjain jail, the publication reported.
The publication said that earlier, the police arrested four men — the owner of Bablu Cycle Services, a franchise of a leading cycle brand in Mehidpur in Ujjain, Mukesh Kumar, along with Sachin Yadav of Gurgaon, Satish Yadav of Mahendragarh in Haryana, and Avinash Prajapati of Ujjain — in this connection. All four are currently incarcerated at Model Burail jail.
DSP (EOW) Sukhraj Katewa said, “Police investigation reveals the gang members used to clone the confidential details of account holders. Cloned details included the procuring duplicate checkbooks and the signatures of account holders. In the case of Dr. Ajay Sood, the accused procured the duplicate checks of the NRI doctor and transferred the amount in two installments with fake signatures of the complainant. The mastermind of the gang is still absconding. We are also verifying the role of Bank of India staff members. So far, no involvement of bank employees has come to light,” according to the publication.