Police form SIT to probe Kolkata bank fraud, banks to refund money in 7-10 days
Kolkata, Aug 1 (IBNS): The Kolkata Police on Wednesday constituted a Special Investigation Team (SIT) to probe one of the biggest bank fraud that had been reported from few parts of the city, officials said.
Since Monday, several customers of few nationalized banks, including Canara Bank, Punjab National Bank (PNB) and State Bank of India (SBI), and private sector banks, including ICICI Bank and Kotak-Mahindra Bank, lodged complaints with the city police claiming that a few thousand rupees was fraudulently withdrawn from their savings accounts.
At least 37 customers of Canara Bank's Golpark-Gariahat branch in south Kolkata alleged that the money was fraudulently debited from their accounts in two or more phases on last Saturday (July 28) and Sunday (July 29).
A senior official of the city police said that at least 76 complaints of fraudulent withdrawal have been registered at few police stations in north and south Kolkata.
"Around 76 bank customers from south Kolkata's Gariahat, Ballygunge, Park Street and Bhawanipore areas have registered complaints of fraudulent withdrawal with us so far and to probe the matter, we have formed a Special Investigation Team (SIT) under the leadership of Deputy Commissioner (Cyber Cell) Santosh Pandey while all the divisional DCs, respective police stations and our Anti Bank Fraud section have been activated," Joint CP (Crime) Praveen Tripathi told IBNS.
"We have come to know that around 18-20 lakh rupees were fraudulently withdrawn from few ATMs in Delhi's Hauz Khas, Connaught Place and Monrika areas and we've informed Delhi Police about the matter," Tripathi said.
The official said that ATM-cum-debit cards of these customers might have been cloned by the hackers.
"After preliminary investigation, we are suspecting that fraudsters used skimmers at ATM machines to clone the ATM-cum-debit cards of the victim customers and after capturing their data, they withdrew the money," the senior IPS officer said.
"We have identified two unguarded ATM counters- PNB's ATM booth at Mullick Bazar and Canara Bank's ATM counter at Golpark- from where victim bank customers' cards were suspectedly cloned," Tripathi added.
Meanwhile, city police's forensic teams on Wednesday evening examined the two ATM booths.
After discussing the matter with respective banks' officials, city police officers said that money will be refunded to the victim customers in next 7 to 10 days.
"I had words with the banks' officials and they assured me that victim customers will get their money back in next 7 to 10 days," Praveen Tripathi said.
"We are expecting to catch the bank fraud racket very soon," Tripathi added.
(Reporting by Deepayan Sinha)
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