Gang tries to con 100 pregnant women in Bihar, Jharkhand wit ..

Investigations into online bank cheating cases have found that arrested accused Gunilal Mandal’s gang had contacted over 100 women in Bihar and Jharkhand in the last one year about monetary facilities from government to pregnant women or those who delivered babies recently.
The gang wanted bank accounts details of these women for fraud. But no woman provided details, city police, who interrogated Mandal in two cyber fraud cases, said.
Mandal was arrested early this month from his village, Paniya (Bihar) while he was with a co-accused to target a gullible person. City police brought him here and his revelations shocked investigators. “The eight-member gang used at least 150 accounts to transfer money they would get by cheating people. The money would travel from accounts to make it difficult for police to trace, before it reached the gang’s accounts,” said an officer.
Mandal was interrogated by inspector Rajan Bidkar, sub-inspector Pradip Patil and constable Suraj Dahigude. “We found a notebook with 100 phone numbers. Mandal said they had contacted them for account details. They lied that the government would give Rs2,500 to each woman but all told the gang not to call again or disconnected the line,” an officer said.
Police seized 13 mobile phones from Mandal. They bought SIM cards for Rs500 each, in the name of other persons from West Bengal. The accused also used online money transfer app-activated SIM cards which they bought for Rs5,000 each.
Police, from call data records of Mandal’s phone, found he had called up more than 100 people. When police asked them if they lost some money and wanted to complain, some said they did not want to lodge complaints. Others said they got their money back from banks and some were not interested in lodging FIRs.
Mandal was booked in a second case of cheating where he had asked a Grant Road businessman to share an OTP to update phone banking and later transferred more than Rs 2 lakh from the victim’s account to different accounts. The victim quickly approached police and investigators blocked the accounts and saved Rs 1.4 lakh.