Hiding behind army facade

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By: Ankit Shukla

The Military Intelligence (MI), Southern Command has busted a gang of 10 conmen, who duped gullible people by posing as personnel of the Indian Army. All gang members have been arrested.

They had committed similar crimes at many places across the country and were wanted by the police of various states. The gang operating from the border areas of Haryana, Uttar Pradesh and Rajasthan used identity documents of a jawan posted with the Southern Command.

A defence spokesperson told Mirror that the action was a result of a tip-off received by the MI, Southern Command having its headquarters in Pune. The MI carried out raids at a number of places, including Bharatpur, Mewat, Nuh and Deeg. It arrested the accused with the help of the Haryana, Uttar Pradesh and Rajasthan police.

Several fabricated military identity/canteen cards, PAN, Aadhaar cards, over three dozen mobiles, 206 SIM cards and seven laptops were recovered during the raids. As per the cybercrime complaint portal, they have duped more than 60 innocent individuals across India.

The arrested persons were later handed over to the civilian police. A case of cyber fraud has been filed with the civilian police against them, the defence spokesperson said.

According to sources from the MI, they received the tip-off that Sanjeev Kumar (30), a cyber fraudster, was conning people by posing as an army man. Acting on the inputs, Kumar was picked up from Bharatpur.

Sanjeev Kumar was jointly interrogated by the police of Haryana, UP, Rajasthan and MI, Pune. During the interrogation, he admitted to be a part of a racket having bases in the Mewat, Nuh and Deeg areas.

Later, raids were carried out at the bases of the racket and nine more members of the gang were arrested.

The MI sources said the gang members have a past of committing cyber crimes with several FIRs and complaints on police record against them for duping innocent civilians.

The gang spotted their victims through online house renting and other websites and gained their trust by using morphed identity documents of serving army jawan Deepak Bajrang Pawar.

The gang would first make a notional payment of a few rupees to the victim to verify the transaction for the settled deal of renting a property, buying some goods or a secondhand vehicle. They would then cite some technical issues and ask the victims to share OTPs or scan QR codes. Once these OTPs or codes were provided, they would reverse transfer funds from the victim’s account.

The defence spokesperson said the gang would operate in the Bharatpur-Mewat region, which is on the border of UP, Haryana, Delhi and Rajasthan to cause crime jurisdiction complexities and to evade arrests. The gang would also use multiple SIM cards and mobile phones and bank accounts to commit frauds.

The MI sources said on receiving the tip-off, they first kept a watch on online activities of the gang and examined their patterns. Later, they contacted Sanjeev Singh while posing as a prospective client and lured him into a trap.

The defence mouthpiece said that the gang members were wanted by the police in Gujarat, UP, Andhra Pradesh, Maharashtra and many other states.

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The modus operandi
The gang would first make a notional payment of a few rupees to the victim to verify the transaction for the settled deal of renting a property, buying some goods or a second-hand vehicle. They would then cite some technical issues and ask the victims to share OTPs or scan QR codes. Once these OTPs or codes were provided, they would do reverse transfer funds from the victim’s account.


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