Ten members of an inter-state racket were arrested on Sunday from Asansol on charges of withdrawing money from bank accounts of different people after getting the necessary data by befooling them. The accused had engaged several job aspirants in a "fake" call centre to collect the account details over phone.
The accused were arrested from Asansol during a joint raid conducted by officers of Criminal Investigation Department (CID) and Asansol-Durgapur Police Commissionerate.
Rajesh Kumar, ADG CID, said: "They used to withdraw money from accounts of different people after getting their bank account details."
The police had come to know about it after receiving a complaint from a man saying that money was withdrawn from his bank account though he was not aware of it when it happened. It led to the suspicion of the police and they initiated a probe in this connection.
Investigation revealed that a call centre was set up from where people, mainly the aged ones, were contacted to get their details including that of their bank accounts.
The prime accused had engaged job aspirants in the call centre saying that they were working on behalf of an IT company. They were given training to convince people to collect their bank account details, etc.
They used to call up a person and ask them whether they have linked their Aadhar cards with a bank. In case the person said no, the callers used to convince them to provide them all details to link it on their behalf.
After the data was collected, money used to get transferred to the accounts of the accused.
During the raid the police have seized several laptops and 20 mobile phones. The prime accused had managed to flee to some other state and a search was initiated for the accused.
A police officer said it is suspected that the racket has spread its tentacles to different other states and they have duped many people.