Jharkhand trio arrested for ATM fraud

The accused were identified as M Vijay Kumar Mandal (22), R Juhendaer Kumar Mandal (23) and S Baskar Kumar (25), all hailing from Jharkhand.

The Bidhannagar cyber-crime police from Kolkata, who were searching for the trio for more than a year, traced the trio to Chennai based on a tip-off and found that they were staying at a hotel in Triplicane. With the help of the Triplicane police, a team of six police officers from Kolkata, led by inspector Choudry, arrested the trio in the wee hours of Sunday.

“The trio hacked debit card details of more than 100 people and made duplicate cards with which they withdrew cash,” the police said.

The men were staying in a room of the number 101 in the hotel and were using one of the cloned ATM cards to pay for it. While searching the room, police found Rs 25 lakh in cash and seized it.

They were produced before a Magistrate court in Chennai and were to be taken to Kolkata after obtaining a transit warrant, however, one of the accused, Magesh, escaped from the cutody of Kolkata police when he, along with the other two accused were brought to Chennai Central to book tickets after they were produced before the Magistrate.

In November last year, the city police had arrested a Romanian duo who had come to Chennai to withdraw cash from foreign accounts with cloned debit and credit cards.