2 held for swindling money from people on pretext of depositing cash into bank accounts

Two men have been arrested here for allegedly swindling people out of their cash on the pretext of helping them make deposits into their bank accounts using machines, police said Friday.

The accused, identified as Jitender Mehto (32) and Baccha Lal Kumar (19), are residents of the same village in Bihar's West Champaran district, they said.

"They were arrested on July 4 at around 2 pm when they again came to target people at a bank branch in Bhogal," Deputy Commissioner of Police (Southeast) Chinmoy Biswal said.

The complaint was filed on June 7, police said.

They said the complainant alleged that on May 27, while he was depositing Rs 45,000 into his account using the machine installed at the bank branch in Bhogal, two persons came there and on the pretext of helping him, swindled him out of his cash.

The duo was arrested after police scanned CCTV footage of the premises where the incident took place, they said.

The interrogation revealed that the accused used to work as labours in West Bengal and few months back, they met one Babu, who was also from their village and used to work in Delhi, police said.

Babu used to dupe people using same modus operandi. He allured Mehto and Kumar to work with him, Biswal said, adding that they used to pay 20 per cent commission to Babu and he had assured them to provide support in case they get arrested.

On the pretext of helping out the customers during the rush hours, the accused used to dupe people of their money, he said.

While helping out the targets in depositing their cash, the accused secretly used to press the "add transaction" button on the machine and then would tell them that the deposit was successful, the DCP said.

However, as soon as the target left the premises, the accused pressed the "cancel" button, resulting in a failed transaction due to which the cash would come out of the machine, police said.