Mangaluru police arrest 11 Indians in Nepal over cyber crime charges

The Mangaluru city police have arrested 11 Indians in Nepal on charges of cheating people in Mangaluru and other parts of the country through online investment fraud, digital arrest and other cyber crimes by being in Nepal.

Mangaluru Police Commissioner Sudheer Kumar Reddy at a press conference here on Thursday, gave names of the arrested as Makavan Vikram, 25, of Bhavnagar district in Gujarat, Soumyaditya Chattopadhyay, 21, of Kolkata; Pupla Shiva Kumar Rao, 32, of Singhbhum district in Jharkhand; Gaurav Pandey 24, of Mau district in Uttar Pradesh; Harsh Mishra, 22, of Sultanpur district in Uttar Pradesh; Rajesh Mandan, 30, of Deoghar district in Jharkhand; Mohammed Akeeb Ali, 27, of Lucknow district in Uttar Pradesh; Rajeev Ranjan Kumar, 30, of Nalanda district in Bihar; Mithun Kumar Mangaraj, 38, of Singhbhum district of Jarkhand, Naushad Ali, 34, of Jhansi district in Uttar Pradesh and Om Prakash Yadav, 37, of Jaipur in Rajasthan.

Mr. Reddy said that 16 Indians were involved in cyber frauds by being in Nepal. Of them, five Indians are absconding and search is on to trace them. A team of Mangaluru police went to Nepal and arrested 11 accused. The Nepal police have taken custody of some Chinese nationals, who were alleged associates of Indians in the cyber frauds.

Mr. Reddy said 11 persons were arrested in connection with the case registered in the city in January in which a resident complained of losing ₹ 1.38 crore to online fraud. The police found that the accused had a network of account holders and persons, who made the victims transfer money to different bank accounts. Later, the accused quickly turned the amount into USDT crypto currency for further distribution to accounts held abroad.

With regard to ₹ 1.38 crore cheating case, the accused used 10 bank accounts. There were a total of 128 complaints in the National Cyber Crime Reporting Portal (NCRP) in connection with these accounts. The total loss in relation to 128 complaints was estimated at ₹ 30.7 crore. The accused used a total of 624 bank accounts for cyber fraud and there are more than 4,580 complaints in the NCRP. In one of the accounts, the amount transacted by the accused stood at ₹ 167 crore, Mr. Reddy said.

The accused made use of native speakers, sitting in Cambodia and Nepal, to speak to victims using Whatsapp, Instagram and Telegram and made them invest money. When the transfer of money got blocked following police complaint, accused distributed a portion of the proceeds to the callers and also holders of the bank accounts that were used, before sharing the remaining amount among themselves. The accused cheated victims ranging between Rs. 60 lakh and Rs. 1 crore every day, he said.

Asking people not to fall prey to investment frauds, Mr. Reddy asked victims to quickly report about the crime, which will help police to stop transfer of amount and get back the lost amount. Delay in reporting will help accused to change the form of the money, which will make it difficult for police to recover the money. In the case of the victim who lost ₹ 1.38 crore, the city police could only recover about ₹ 7 lakh, Mr. Reddy said.

The police have seized a laptop, 21 mobile phones, 20 sim cards and 20 debit and credit cards from the accused.