Haryana Police busts fingerprint cloning gang, 5 held

CHANDIGARH: The Haryana Police on Monday claimed to have busted a gang involved in siphoning off money from people’s accounts using the Aadhar Enabled Payment System (AEPS) by cloning their fingerprints in Palwal district.
A police spokesperson said that five members of the gang, including a woman, who were involved in online fraud worth crores, were also arrested in raids at different locations in Delhi and Palwal.
Police has also recovered a biometric machine, 11 debit cards of different banks, 270 SIM cards, fingerprint rubber stamp machine, five bottles of rubber gel photo polymer, one laptop, printer, one lamination machine, 2,078 copies of registries, 220 cloned fingerprints, 68 blank Aadhar cards, 21 PAN cards, 64 passport size photographs, five Aadhar cards and a pen drive.
He said that a special team was formed after complaints were reported in the district about money being withdrawn without actual account owners making any transactions.
Police have registered 43 cases of online fraud between May 24 and June 2, 2021.
Divulging the details, he said that fraudsters made attempts to get the documents used for fraud from the staff of registry offices.
When they did not get any success, the scammers contacted a private person who did the binding of registry documents in Palwal tehsil and obtained copies of documents of registry done at a high cost.
They then cloned the fingerprints of sellers and purchasers and carried out illegal transactions through biometric devices.
They used to withdraw amounts up to Rs 10,000 using cloned fingerprints.
The arrested accused were identified as Rohit (33), Chitranjan (28), Amir Hussain (27), Kiran (28), and Tularam (40).
“We are trying to gather more information about the involvement of others and how many innocent people were cheated by the gang members through online fraud,” said SP Palwal Deepak Gahlawat.