Hyderabad: The Cyber Crime Police of the Cyberabad Commissionerate on Friday arrested a notorious “dating fraud” gang on Friday for cheating the public on the pretext of providing male/female escort services. The gang would lure people through dating websites and then cheat young men who would respond to their advertisements.
According to Commissioner of Police, Cyberabad, police, V. C. Sajjanar, the gang of eight created many websites and extracted money from the public mentioning various kinds of fees. The accused persons have been identified as Bijay Kumar Sah, Binod Kumar, Mohamad Nur Alam Ansari, Deepa Haldar, and Shikha Halder. All of them hail from West Bengal. Three others namedSanthu Das, Amit Paul and Sushank Kumar Sah are still absconding.
The above-accused persons are involved in two cases, and the issue came to light after the police received a complaint from a person stating that he registered himself in the Indian Escort Service Pvt. Ltd., Kolkata, through a website. The complainant said that post-registration he received calls from various numbers and that he assured of a male escort job, for which he was asked to pay various amounts.
Believing the accused, the complainant paid them a staggering amount of Rs. 13,82,643 into their accounts towards things like joining fees, product purchase fees, late fees, GST, insurance fee, refund amount fee etc. He was again asked to pay Rs. 1,50,000 for bank clearance upon which the complainant realized that he was being cheated and then requested for police legal action.
Basing on the complaints, cases were registered with the Cyber Crime Police, which worked out the clues sent a team to Siliguri in West Bengal. The team raided call centres from where the accused were working.
The police also seized a laptop, 31 smartphones, documents pertaining to the crime and 12 ATM cards as well.