2 Men who conned pensioners pan India of lakhs held

Lucknow, Aug 16 (IANS) The UP Cyber cell has arrested two persons who posed as treasury officials and duped retired government officials.

Five members of their gang are still at large.

The two arrested, identified as Pramod Mandal and Mantu Kumar Mandal, had allegedly duped several people in Telangana, Andhra Pradesh, Delhi, West Bengal, Maharashtra, Madhya Pradesh, Karnataka, Odisha, Rajasthan.

The Cyber cell officials said that in Uttar Pradesh alone, the gang had duped persons of Rs 5 crore in the past one year.

The two were arrested from Kolkata in West Bengal by the cyber cell. The police also recovered different SIM cards, bank ATMs, Bluetooth sound systems, from their possession.

Pramod belongs to Dumka in Jharkhand, and Mantu is also from Dhanbad.

Additional Director General of UP Cyber Cell, Ram Kumar, said Pramod Mandal was the mastermind who had been booked in 36 cases of duping retired government officials. Kumar also said the arrested duo used to call their targets while impersonating as treasury officer or officer looking for the pension and other allowances that a retired employee is used to get from the department.

The cyber cell of the UP police got active after it received complaints from retired police pensioners of being duped.

Pensioner Chhote Lal was duped of Rs 11 lakh, while Ram Lakhan Chaudhary of Rs 10 lakh and Udaiveer Singh of Rs 10 lakh. All three were duped within a period of three months.

Several similar complaints were reported in the district cyber cell units of Lucknow, Hardoi.

In Lucknow, a retired secretariat official was duped of Rs 53 lakh.

"They easily tricked the target and used it to secure the password of their ATM or details of the bank account. Thereafter, the money was transferred in e-wallets which they encashed," said Kumar.

Another police official of the cyber cell said that each member in the gang was assigned a particular work like getting fake bank accounts opened, procuring fake SIM cards, making calls to victims, informing about police movement and for bank work to encash the money obtained through fraud. They were given the share of money as per the importance of their work.

Police said Pramod had formed a gang employing several of his kin and his distant relatives.

Efforts are on to arrest the remaining members of the gang.