Ghaziabad Man Linked To Rs 552 Crore Fraud With Bank Arrested By Noida Cops

The Noida police on Thursday arrested a 29-year-old man from Ghaziabad in connection with its probe into a fraud totalling worth Rs 552 crore with a private bank, among others, officials said.

This is the fourth arrest in connection with the case which was first lodged in May this year and later the accused members of the gang were booked under the Gangsters' Act as well, they said.

Aman Sharma, the arrested accused, a resident of Ghaziabad's Lal Kuan area is an active member of a gang "involved in floating bogus companies that were used to dupe hundreds of crore of rupees from banks on the basis of forged documents," a police spokesperson said.

"To prevent the gang from committing further crimes, its members were booked under the Gangsters Act through an FIR registered at the Phase 1 police station here," the spokesperson said.

Sharma was arrested from outside his house on Thursday, the official added.

An official of the Phase 1 police station here told PTI this is the fourth arrest in this Gangsters Act case and the gang leader Anurag Chitkara alias Anurag Arora has already been held.

The UP Special Task Force and the Noida Police had in May busted this gang and arrested eight persons who allegedly duped multiple banks to the tune of crores by floating over a dozen bogus companies and taking loans using forged documents like Aadhaar and PAN cards of non-existing employees.

The bogus firms had opened bank accounts on the names of persons whom they showed as employees and even made provident fund deductions to ensure that the existence of their firms is not put under doubt by banks in giving the loans, the police said.

A private bank in May approached the Noida Police and claimed that 83 ghost employees of a bogus firm were issued loans worth over Rs 6.68 crore by it and the pending amount has reached Rs 552 crore, according to the FIR accessed by PTI.

(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)