The arrests took place near Hariom Nagar Tiraha in Uttar Pradesh, police said. (Representational)
Uttar Pradesh Police on Friday claimed to have busted a gang involved in siphoning off money from bank accounts of people by cloning their fingerprints by arresting its 11 members.
The arrests took place near Hariom Nagar Tiraha and district panchayat areas, it said.
Police said they seized over Rs 9 lakh cash, one car, one motorcycle, fingerprint scanner, fingerprint clone making device, 53 SIM cards, cheque books, passbooks, ATM cards, laptops, pen drives and documents.
Senior Superintendent of Police Dinesh Kumar P said the 11 accused arrested were booked under relevant sections of the Indian Penal Code, including 420 (fraud), 120 B (criminal conspiracy), and the IT Act.
During interrogation, the accused told police that they used to give money to people of Nepal and Delhi for opening bank accounts and also give money to them for providing details of passbooks, ATM cards, net banking user ID passwords and KYC. The accused would then transfer the money earned through fraud in these accounts, the police said.
Those arrested included Raghvendra Mishra, a resident of Daudpur in Gorakhpur, who used to help in opening bank accounts of people from Nepal and Delhi, Sonu Kumar Paswan, a resident of Chiluatal in Gorakhpur, who used to withdraw money via e-transaction through Aadhar card data and fingerprints, they said.
Another accused Mukesh Kumar, a resident of Sahjanwa in Gorakhpur, used to sell Aadhar card and fingerprint data. Vikas alias Vicky, a resident of Sahjanwa, was working at a photocopy shop and used to download land registry data including Aadhar card numbers and fingerprint data of people and sell it to Paswan, police said.
The other accused are identified as Syed Jawed Ali, Shashank Pandey, Sagar Jaiswal, Rahul Rana, Amit Kanaujia, Ashish Pathak, and Nepali national Dipendra Thapa.
(This story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)