Cheque fraud gang operated in metros

HOWRAH: The

Howrah City Police

has formed two teams to probe the 'multi-crore' bank fraud that came to light after seven members of a racket were arrested on Monday. While one team is focusing on the fraudsters' foreign links, the other is looking into the modus operandi and networks of the racket.


Police sources said the seven arrested were tough to crack, with some of them reportedly telling interrogators that they would rather die than reveal anything. The investigators, however, said they managed to get some confessions during overnight interrogation.

The cops added that after repeated questioning, some among the seven broke down and confessed that their racket targeted cash-rich businessmen in Kolkata, Delhi, Mumbai, Chennai and Hyderabad. The gang has operatives in each of these metros, apart from in some small towns like Gaya.

The police team probing the methods adopted by the racket will visit the five metros and towns the racket was active in. Team members will speak to local police of these cities and towns as well as banks to bring under one umbrella all complaints of bank fraud at these places.

Sources said the team will focus on those who complained that money had been withdrawn from their accounts through cheques they had never issued. It will then try to zero in on withdrawals from accounts using forged cheques printed by the racketeers. Police have already seized forged cheque books of 11 banks - five nationalised and six private.

Police sources said it took officials of these banks some time to realise that those cheque books had indeed been forged. The forgery was so done so professionally that the cheques dodged the new

cheque truncation system

(CTS) or image-based clearing system (ICS) and faked even the magnetic ink character recognition (MICR) data.

While interrogating the accused, the team probing the foreign links of the racket managed to make them cough out some methods they used. Sleuths learnt that every month, the racketeers' contacts in Pakistan and Dubai would send different representatives, each carrying a torn Indian currency note. This was meant to serve as the representatives' ID and an assurance to the local fraudsters of his genuineness. These representatives were handed loads of Indian currency collected by the racketeers through forged cheques.