
A joint team of the Cyber Cell and Uttar Pradesh Police has arrested seven members of a gang involved in a major financial fraud. The gang managed to siphon off ₹120 crore from the bank account of the APJ Abdul Kalam Technical University (AKTU). The fraudsters posed as AKTU officials and opened a new account in the university’s name at a branch of a nationalized bank where the varsity already had an account. They then tricked the bank officials into transferring the funds in five installments to the new account. From there, the money was further transferred to an account of a Gujarat-based charitable trust in another nationalized bank.
The suspicious transactions raised concerns among the bank officials, who initiated an audit and discovered the fraud. The officials promptly informed the police, leading to the arrest of the seven individuals allegedly involved in the crime. The gang had obtained a letter required for the transfer of funds from the branch manager of the public sector bank and impersonated AKTU’s authorized signatory to open the second bank account. They also procured cheque books and transferred the money to the Gujarat-based company’s bank account.
The arrested individuals have been identified as Devendra Prasad Prabha Shankar Joshi and Uday Patel from Gujarat, Rajesh Babu of Unnao, Girish Chandra and Shailesh Kumar Raghuvanshi of Lucknow, Dastgeer Alam of Amethi, and Krishna Kant of Basti district.
The police have successfully recovered ₹119 crore from the accused by stopping the payment. The miscreants had obtained the email ID of the bank by contacting the bank’s branch manager, who was on vacation at the time. They sent a fake letter to the Jankipuram branch, where AKTU has a bank account, instructing them to transfer the money to AKTU’s FD account at the Vidhan Sabha Marg branch. However, the bank sensed foul play and requested the Gujarat bank, where the trust had an account, to stop the payment.
Bank manager Anuj Kumar Saxena, who was targeted by the fraudsters, reported that he received a call from a man posing as Shailesh Kumar Raghuvanshi, who asked for his visiting card to make a fixed deposit. Saxena sent Raghuvanshi to the bank and asked a bank official to assist him. The next day, Saxena received a call from someone claiming to be the finance officer of AKTU, inquiring about the FD rate at the bank. Subsequently, large sums of money were transferred from the Jankipuram branch to the Vidhan Sabha Marg branch, raising suspicions and leading to the discovery of the fraud.
The investigation is ongoing, and the police are working to gather more evidence and identify any additional individuals involved in the crime.