Indore (Madhya Pradesh): Two more men from UP were arrested in connection with the Rs 1.6 crore ‘Digital Arrest’ case in the city, on Wednesday. So far, 13 accused have been arrested but the police were clueless about the kingpin of their gang.

One of the accused is a wholesale garment trader who received Rs 25 lakh in commission as he had provided a current account to the gang. Police also found transactions of Rs 1.66 crore in his bank account. It is believed that these transactions were related to other fraud cases that took place across 12 states of the country.  

DCP (crime) Rajesh Tripathi informed media persons that the 59-year-old woman was targeted by online fraudsters a few days ago. The accused posing as CBI, RBI and police officers had ‘digitally’ arrested her and received Rs 1.6 crore from her on the pretext of investigation in a money laundering case.

The woman was scared as the accused had told her that they would send her to jail in the money laundering case. A case under section 318(4), 308(2), 316(5), 111(4), 3(5) of BNS was registered by the crime branch. After investigations, 11 accused from Gujarat and MP were arrested for providing their bank accounts to the online fraud gang.

During interrogation, the accused gave information about other gang members and crime branch arrested Manoj Kumar (30) a resident of Shravasti in UP and Agam Sahani (21), a resident of Lucknow.  

Monoj allegedly informed the crime branch officers that he is a wholesale garment trader and confessed that he had allowed the gang members to use his current bank account to receive money from ‘digital arrest’ cases. Agam is a BCom student and he allegedly informed the officers that he used to provide bank accounts of people to the gang members.

The transactions were made by the gang with the promise to give a commission of Rs 3 lakh in cash to the arrested accused. For providing the gang with a current account, Manoj received Rs 25 lakh as commission after Rs 1.6 crore was deposited into his account from the victim's account.

Police said apart from this, Monoj had received Rs 1.66 crore in two days from different accounts and the crime branch officials are investigating all the transactions. The gang members had destroyed all SIM cards used in the crime to mislead the police. All the accused are on police remand.

So far, the crime branch has arrested Prateek Jariwal, Abhishek Jariwal, Chandrabhan Bansal, Rakesh Kumar Bansal, Vivek Ranjan alias Pintu Giri of Kheda in Gujarat, Altaf Qureshi of Anand, Abhishek Chakrawarti of Cooch Behar, Rohan Shakya, Ayush Rathore of Sehore, Nilesh Gorele and Abhishek Tripathi of Bhopal, Monoj Kumar and Agam Sahani from UP.

They were directly or indirectly associated with the gang. Officers claimed that people from Bihar, Gujarat, Haryana, Meghalaya, MP, Tamil Nadu, West Bengal, Assam, Kerala, Maharashtra, Odisha and Telangana were duped by the gang. Investigation is on to verify the information.