Two foreign nationals held in Mumbai for cloning cards

Colaba police detained two Turkish nationals from a hotel on Wednesday night for allegedly committing multiple card- cloning frauds in Assam. They were later arrested on Thursday by Assam Police and taken to Assam on a seven-day transit remand, the police said.

Officers from the Assam Police told HT that the accused – Emrah Igdi, 33 and Abdul Halik Yurgan, 42 – have around 46 cases against them in Assam and are a part of an international card-cloning racket. The police are yet to ascertain the total amount of money the accused have withdrawn from the ATMs.

“The duo, along with their two other accomplices, had come to India from Indonesia some months ago. The four men had installed skimmers in various ATM machines across Guwahati. After they derived the card data, they prepared cloned cards and withdrew money from Mumbai,” a crime branch officer from Assam said.

The police began checking the CCTVs installed in ATMs across several parts of Guwahati after several people approached them alleging that money was withdrawn from their cards. “We saw Igdi and Yurgan fitting skimmers into the machines. We learnt that the duo had fled to Kolkata and then to Mumbai. We got to know that the were planning to escape to Istanbul, like their other two accomplices. So we issued look out circulars against them at all the exit points of the country,” the officer said.

The Assam Police then received inputs about Igdi and Yurgan hiding in a hotel in Colaba, following which they requested the Colaba police to detain the two. “We informed the Assam Police officers about nabbing the two accused, following which they arrested the accused under sections 379 (theft) and 420 (cheating) of Indian Penal Code (IPC) and took them to Assam on a seven-day transit remand,” an officer from Colaba police station said. The police also recovered a laptop from them.

The Assam Police are probing if the two have installed skimmers in other states across India

First Published: Sep 06, 2019 00:28 IST