Delhi Police have nabbed two scammers from the remote high-altitude region of Sarchu, located between Himachal Pradesh and Ladakh, for allegedly using accounts of illiterate labourers for carrying out cyber frauds, officials said on Tuesday.

The action came after a complaint last year and a case was registered under section 420 (cheating) of IPC at police station crime branch from a woman who reported unauthorized deduction of Rs 69,953/- from her bank account.

Advertisement

The victim had been contacted on April 30 last year by an individual impersonating an executive from an online coaching institute and after a short while, the aforementioned amount was fraudulently siphoned from her account.

Based on the complaint, a technical analysis and financial trail analysis revealed that the defrauded sum had been dispersed across several bank accounts located in remote villages of Dumka and Godda districts in Jharkhand.

These accounts were found to be registered in the names of daily wage labourers.

Field-level inquiries suggested that these labourers were engaged in infrastructure projects during which their bank accounts were opened under the supervision of site contractors.

Crucially, account credentials including ATM cards and passbooks were retained by the suspects for illicit use in cyber frauds.

This evidence pointed to an organized criminal nexus targeting poor and illiterate villagers, using their identities to open and control bank accounts as conduits for laundering cyber-crime proceeds.

In order to nab the culprits, a team was dispatched to Jharkhand by disguising as locals and it was found that the accounts were opened by Mansoor Ansari and Imran Ansari, who had fled to Ladakh in order to avoid arrest, Deputy Commissioner of Police (Cyber Cell) Harsh Indora.

Subsequently they were arrested from a remote village in Himachal Pradesh and they revealed that they used to open bank accounts in the name of labourers who were getting money to give their bank accounts to both the victims.

In order to evade detection, the fraudsters frequently relocated to remote areas such as Ladakh after completing the transactions.