Two more arrests in bank account data theft case
Two more people were arrested by officials of the cyber police station of Pune police in the case of bank account data fraud in which 11 people were earlier arrested. While the first police custody remand of the earlier arrested 11 people ended on Saturday, their custody was extended till March 22 along with the two newly arrested men.
The arrested were identified as Lakshminarayan Gattu alias Sonya (32), a resident of Baudhanagar in Varasigude in Hyderabad, and Vyankatesh Subramanium Uppala (40), a resident of Bhandalaguda in Nagol region of Hyderabad.
Sudhir Shantilal Bhatevara alias Jain (54), a resident of Sun Empire Society in the Sinhagad road area of Pune was the one person who was not arrested by the police during the initial raid. Now, he has been declared as being at large after he failed to comply with the terms in the notice which was served to him. He was served a notice under Section 40(1)(a) of the Code of Criminal Procedure and was advised to be available at home for investigation whenever required.
The others arrested in the case include Anagha Modak (40), a resident of Vadgaon; Ravindra Mahadev Mashalkar (34), a resident of Ambejogai road in Latur; Mukesh Harishchandra More (37), a resident of Yerawada in Pune; Rajshekhar Yadaiha Mamidi (34), a resident of Hyderabad; Rohan Ravindra Mankani (37), a resident of Sahakarnagar in Pune; Vishal Dhananjay Bendre (45), a resident of Aurangabad; Atmaram Harishchandra Kadam (34), a resident of Mulund in Mumbai; Varun Shrikadam Verma (37), a resident of Meerut in Uttar Pradesh; Vikaschand Mahendra Kumar Yadav (25), a resident of Surat in Gujarat; Rajesh Munnalal Sharma (42), a resident of Aurangabad and Paramjitsingh Sindhu (42), a resident of Aurangabad.
Lakshminarayan is suspected to have been involved in providing data related to bank accounts with a high account balance to Mamidi who was earlier arrested in the case. From the WhatsApp chats recovered from them, the police found information about two bank accounts – one with ₹3 crore and another with ₹25.7 crore balance in it, according to the police.
The woman, who is suspected to have brought the entire chain together, broke down while speaking to her lawyer Advocate S Wagh outside the court.
“The woman has been co-operating for three days prior to her arrest. The FIR was registered after she was held, and everything has already been recovered from her. There is no need for further custody,” said Wagh.
However, an officer close to the investigation had said that the woman was not aware that the hackers who were roaming with her were police decoys who had responded to her call for a hacker that had spread through word of mouth.
“Several laptops were seized from her possession and the hard drive in one of them is missing. We need access to that hard drive and identify the role of any other accused. There is also clear evidence of her conversation with the other accused,” said public prosecutor Dnyaneshwar More.
The defence advocate for two news channel owner partners, Sharma and Sindhu, presented a different story in the court.
He said, “Modak had approached their loss-ridden channel as a financial consultant and offered to arrange for KYC money. The day they were arrested, she had called them for a meeting with a company that was supposed to sign a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) for investment. They were to discuss how to make the investment. My clients were not aware what they were walking into,” said advocate Jitendralal Gorane who was representing the two.
He also said, during his 30-minute-long argument, that the two major banks who run the accounts whose information was found by the police during the investigation have not complained to the police about data theft. However, the police are investigating whether an insider from the bank helped in leaking the information in the first place.
A case under Sections 419, 420, 120(b), and 34 of Indian Penal Code and Sections 43/66 and 66(d) of…