MUMBAI: Two men who were seated amid lush greenery in an open field in Bihar were allegedly trying to indulge in cyber crime when the Mumbai police swooped down on them. While one of them, Gunilal Mandal (21), a school dropout, was nabbed with a clutch of 13 cellphones that he was using to fish for cyber victims, his accomplice Sham Sundar Pandit slipped away in a nearby forest.
An officer from DB Marg police station said recent arrests from various states show that cyber criminals come with little qualification. "School dropouts who are a street-smart and foxy with technology can pull it off," said a police officer.
Mandal used to make calls to gullible people, take their OTP for banking and used it to siphon off money from their accounts. "We got him to Mumbai. A court has remanded him in police custody till November 14," said an officer.
Several city police teams had been in Jharkhand to nab cyber fraudsters in various cases registered in Mumbai. A team comprising sub-inspector Pradip Patil and constable Suraj Dahigude was Jharkhand.
On November 2, an employee of an insurance lodged a police complaint that he had beenn duped of Rs 64,000 that was deducted from his account after a person claiming to be from his bank called him to update his KYC and asked for his password.
The police found that the money was transferred to a payment gateway and further relayed to an account having its address in Banka district of Bihar.
The investigations were monitored by inspectors Suryakant Bangar and Rajan Bidkar. The Mumbai police directed Patil and Dahigude to reach Banka, a 3-hour road journey by road from the place they had been camping in Jharkhand. The two cops disguised as locals surveyed the village. A team from the local Barahat police station went with the Mumbai police team to the village.
"The two were sitting under a tree in a field in the village. Pandit who was alerted on phone by a local about the arrival of a police van in the village managed to escape in a forest located nearby while we caught Mandal," said an officer. "They had 13 mobile phones and were scouting for a target to commit cyber fraud."
This is perhaps a rare instance in which we caught an accused preparing to cheat someone, said the officer, adding that with Mandal's arrest they expect to solve at least 10 registered at various police stations in Mumbai and around.