Fraudsters rob civic body Rs 1.43cr through cloned cheques
Senior bank officials suspect the cash withdrawals were made using some cloned cheque pages as the original pages were still lying in Burdwan Municipality's custody.
The Economic Offences Wing (EOW) in a joint operation with West Bengal and Chhattisgarh counterparts arrested two fraudsters in connection with the fraudulent and unauthorized transfer of Rs 2.45 crore from the official account of Barbil municipality.
While Subas Ghising Giri was arrested on March 24 from Barangar, Barrackpore, in West Bengal, another accused, Saiyed Shahbaaz Naqvi, who is from Raipur in Chhattisgarh, has also been arrested, EOW said in a statement on Sunday.
The duo was arrested on the basis of a complaint filed by the Executive Officer, Barbil Municipality. The complaint had alleged that there was the fraudulent and unauthorised transfer of Rs.2,45,60,800 from their official account maintained with Bank of Baroda, Barbil by forging the cheques and the signature of the complainant.
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The arrested persons were active members of an interstate fraud racket. The accused were running a mule account being an active part of the conspiracy. They had already withdrawn part of embezzled money but were nabbed before withdrawing the rest amount. They used to get 15% of the amount for operating the mule account.
Masterminds of the racket have been identified and efforts are to arrest them soon. During the investigation, an amount of Rs.1.15 Crores out of the fraudulently transferred amount has been located and frozen.
The official account of Barbil Municipality is maintained with the Bank of Baroda, Barbil and the authorized signatory of the account is the Executive Officer of Barbil Municipality. Abhisek Panda is presently working as the Executive Officer, and for any debit transaction from the accounts, his signature is necessarily required.
However, on 16 March and 21 March, the accused persons Giri and Naqvi in criminal conspiracy with others had managed to transfer Rs.2,45,60,800/-from the municipality account by forging the Bank Cheques and the specimen signature of Executive Officer Panda, EOW added.
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