Inter-state bank forgery racket busted

KOLKATA: Police on Friday busted an inter-state forgery racket and arrested six people from the city and nearby areas for allegedly siphoning off Rs 34.75 lakh from the bank account of a Hare Street resident. The accused —Anandamohan Ghosh (35), Jahar Pandit (59), Gulam Murtaza Khan (44), Subrata Saha (44), Sadhu Paswan (48) and Mukhtar Alam (54) have been remanded in police custody till December 3.
Sources said the six were running a bank fraud racket across West Bengal, Bihar and Jharkhand. They called up the Hare Street resident and took his bank account details. Then one of them deactivated the victim’s SIM card, using forged documents. This helped the gang to restrict any bank notification from reaching the victim as the number was registered with the victim’s bank account. One of them later used another set of forged documents to get the same number issued in his name. After siphoning off the amount from the victim’s account, it was broken into small parts and transferred to at four bank accounts in West Bengal and Jharkhand. One of the gang member was earlier arrested in a bank fraud case.