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Cheque forgery racket: PNB manager among 5 held, mastermind flees to US

Police said they recovered as many as 81 cheques of different private and public sector banks from the possession of the accused

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A senior manager of the Punjab National Bank (PNB), along with four others, has been arrested for cloning cheques of account holders and withdrawing nearly Rs 95 lakh from one of the accounts. Police said they recovered as many as 81 cheques of different private and public sector banks from the possession of the accused.

The mastermind of the syndicate, Chirag Chaudhary, has fled the country and is currently in the United States (US), they added. Chaudhary runs a restro-bar, Walk-In Street, in Karol Bagh.

"Gaurav Kumar Goel, 34, Ashish Kumar Parashar alias Kishley Kishore alias Shanu, 28, Amarjeet Singh, 47, Sunil Sharma, 42, and PNB manager Pritam Das, 54, have been arrested. They operated from various parts of the country. Duplicate cheques of banks including PNB, SBI, HDFC, Bank of Baroda, Axis, Bank of India, ICICI, Canara, Indusind, Union, Yes, Karur Vysya, Allahabad, and IDBI banks have been recovered from them," Additional Deputy Commissioner of Police (south) Chinmoy Biswal said.

He further said the accused used sophisticated fonts and restricted ink to re-print the Magnetic Ink Character Recognition (MICR) code and Indian Financial System Code (IFSC).

The racket was unearthed after an account holder approached the police in March, saying that Rs 9,500,000 had been withdrawn from his account, even though he still had the cheque that was used to withdraw the money. The withdrawn amount was transferred to the account of NGO Safe Water Network India. It was later transferred to another account in the name of Lucky Timber and Iron Store, PNB, in Kurukshetra, Haryana.

The account was in the name of Amarjeet Singh, who was immediately arrested. His interrogation revealed that Gaurav Kumar Goel gave him the cheque. "The deal to get Rs 95 lakh was fixed at Rs 30 lakh," the officer added. Amarjeet knew Goel through a chain of contacts but was unaware of his exact address or location.

"He only remembered that Goel had a Volkswagen car. He also remembered the last four digits of the car number. We scanned all the cars of that make. Finally, Goel was arrested from Noida. He had 70 forged cheques issued from various nationalised and private sector banks. Many stamps of various government and non-governmental organisations and banks were also recovered from his possession," Biswal said.

Goel revealed to the police that he was in the business of arranging clients for duplicate cheques on a commission. The forged cheques were made available to him by a network of operators, mostly Chaudhary from Delhi. Kishore used to fill in the critical data, such as the IFSC, MICR code, along with signatures, as per the data provided to him by Chaudhary, who has fled the country and is currently in the US.

MODUS OPERANDI

  • Goel told the police that he was in touch with Kishore via Whatsapp but when Goel's phone was examined, it was found that Kishore's number was a virtual number subscribed on a US SIM card. It was later revealed out that the number was being used from India only and actually belonged to Indian operator Vodafone.
     
  • Kishore's job was to erase and replace IFSC and MICR code. He used special ink procured from grey markets of West Bengal through a slew of contacts, and Corel Draw software, to reprint the compromised codes and cheque numbers.
     
  • The fine-quality forged cheques could not be detected even under the Ultra Violet (UV) rays.
     
  • Chirag Chaudhary and his father Naveen, a CA with good contacts among bankers, are both absconding.
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