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He said the accused booked a package tour to Jammu and Kashmir from a travel agency owned by one Soumitra Kumar Banik, at Rs 10,000, which the fraudster paid online. Shortly after, he returned to the agency, and requested the cancellation of the trip for some unfortunate incident in the family, asking for a refund of Rs 10,000 into another account. The interrogation revealed the gang also encouraged people to open ATM card accounts in large numbers and rent out their ATM cards for a monthly fee of Rs 2,000 to Rs 3,000.
Banik immediately rushed to East Agartala police station and lodged a complaint based on which police launched an investigation and managed to track down the fraudster who had booked the trip.
Investigating officer of the case, officer in-charge of East Agartala police station Rana Chatterjee said the initial investigation indicated that the gang has links with Bangladesh, Dubai and Pakistan. He said the arrested persons all from Agartala were identified as Piyush Debnath from Bodhjung Nagar, Narayan Debnath from the Airport area, Sagar Das from Aralia, Riptadeep Biswas from Nutan Palli, and Rohan Rudra Pal from Kunjaban. The arrested people have been working at the ground to encash the amount from different accounts, which scammers accumulated from various fraudulent means. The scam came into light after one of the members of the racket tried to deceive a travel agency of Agartala two days ago. Trusting him, the agency owner refunded the amount. These rented ATM cards were then used for digital fraud operations. During the raid, the police seized a large number of ATM cards, bank passbooks, and cash from the arrested individuals.
AGARTALA: A local court in West Tripura on Friday sent five youths to three days police remand who were arrested from different locations of the city for their alleged involvement in an organized gang for making fraudulent transactions to turn black money into white. However, a short while later, Tamil Nadu police contacted Soumitra Kumar Banik and informed him that his bank account had been involved in illegal transactions and had been blocked on Wednesday.