Kota (Rajasthan): Two people have been arrested for allegedly stealing almost Rs 1.50 lakh from an SBI ATM at the railway station branch here, police said on Sunday. The third accused involved in the crime is yet to be nabbed, they said.
The two accused arrested on Saturday were identified as Niyamat (33) and Parvej (25), both residents of Mewat. A search is on for Farukh who is from the same area. The accused executed the fraud in separate incidents by tampering with the ATM cable and disrupting the machine's Internet connectivity, the police said.
They would disrupt the transaction when the cash would hit the cash tray due to which the ATM would fail to register the transaction and show a "declined" prompt on the screen, they said. The accused would then pocket the cash and complete the fraud by lodging a false complaint with the bank's customer care, claiming that the amount was debited but they didn't receive the cash.
Read: 8 accused in the Pushpak Express gang-rape, robbery case held
A deputy manager of SBI bank branch located at the railway station area had lodged a complaint against illegal transactions worth Rs 1,49,700 made during September 22-25, Deputy Superintendent of Police and Circle Officer Bhagwat Singh Hingad told reporters. An investigation led by the technical and cyber team led to the arrest of the accused on Saturday, he added.
According to Hingad, the accused procured ATM cards of several different banks from their relatives and offered them good money in return.
The accused chose only those ATMs where power and Internet cables lay open and unprotected, he added. The accused used the same modus operandi to cheat banks in Chennai, Delhi and other cities. They are being interrogated about the involvement of other people in the previous incidents, he added.
PTI
