PDS scam leads to cryptocurrency racket

Rajkot: Amreli police and district authorities stumbled upon a possible cryptocurrency trading scam when they raided a fair price shop (FPS) in Rajula Marketing Yard where a racket of pilfering food grains meant for poor was flourishing.
During the raid and search operation on Wednesday night, authorities were surprised to discover a server room adjoining the FPS and found equipment worth Rs 20 lakh, two air conditioners in the 10 feet X 10 feet room. An electricity bill of Rs 10,000 a month was also found there. The FPS was run by a man named Shailesh Sarvaiya, but his role in the possible cryptocurrency racket is yet to be established.
In all, 16 people were rounded up for questioning of which six have been arrested. Along with pilfering foodgrains by using a parallel software and rigging the existing online Aadhaar-card based system, these persons are also suspected to be running the cryptocurrency racket, police officials said.
Talking to TOI, Amreli district collector Aayush Oak said, “We found this server room by chance. We expect to find large amount of data stored in the server. The data could not be more than that of public distribution system (PDS) data because we have information that these people were dealing in some kind of cryptocurrency too. We we might find land records of surrounding areas.”
The rudimentary server looks to be assembled with various computer parts like hard driver, processors, printed circuit boards (PCB) etc. Police also found several books on computer science, computer application and hardware in the server room, which led investigators to suspect that there are few masterminds running the cryptocurrency racket.
FSL team seized the laptops, computers and other electronic devices.
Amreli superintendent of police (SP), Nirlipt Rai, said, “According to the primary information, these persons were trading in cryptocurrency using the server. We have asked the Forensic Science Laboratory (FSL), Gandhinagar to verify the volume of trading so far. A separate offence will be registered on basis of the FSL report.”
Those arrested were Ashok Vaghela, Dinesh Sheth, Chirag Gorakhia, Shailesh Sarvaiya, Nizar Chavda and Kamal Nakum. They were booked under various sections of IPC, the Aadhaar (Targeted Delivery of Financial and Other Subsidies, Benefits and Services) Act, 2016, Information Technology Act and Essential Commodity Act, 1955.