Six held for duping Canadian citizen

The Kolkata Police busted a racket duping Canadian citizens on the pretext of providing services and arrested five persons from a fake call centre in Lucknow while one was arrested from Garden Reach.

According to Kolkata Police, they were informed by Canadian Police through Interpol in August that a resident of Canada, identified as Donna Hegarty-Potts, was duped of about 8000 Canadian Dollars equivalent to around Rs 4,72,384. Based on the input, a suo motu case was registered at the Kolkata Cyber Crime Police Station. The Interpol had informed that the money was credited in two accounts of a nationalised bank’s Karl Marx Sarani branch. During investigation, the account numbers and mobile numbers through which these accounts operated and the device identification details were collected.

Later, the police zeroed in on two men, identified as Md Zunaid Ansari of Ekbalpore area and one Shadab Alam of Garden Reach area, said to be masterminds of the racket. During the probe it was learnt that Ansari ran a fake call centre from Lucknow and a team was sent to Sarojini Nagar area of Lucknow from where the five accused, including Ansari were arrested.

Meanwhile, another police team in Kolkata conducted a raid at Ramnagar Lane area and nabbed Alam. He was produced at the Chief Metropolitan Magistrate’s Court, Calcutta and remanded to police custody till September 23. The other five accused were produced at the Chief Judicial Magistrate’s Court in Lucknow and have been allowed transit remand till September 15.