BARGARH: Padampur police on Wednesday claimed to have busted a multi-district cyber fraud racket involving transactions exceeding Rs 7 crore by arresting four persons including a woman.
Two of the accused are Chandani Agrawal (35) of Padampur and Rakesh Kumar Mandal (38) of Sitamarhi in Bihar. Both of them were arrested from Mumbai. The other two accused are Mohammad Rizwan ( 2 4 ) and Siddheswar Pattnaik (26) of Padampur.
Police said the arrests were made following directions issued by the SP of CID-CB, Odisha. On February 17, SI Pramila Marei (30) of Padampur police station verified two suspected mule bank accounts at the local branches of Punjab National Bank and UCO Bank. During verification, police found that the two accounts were allegedly operated by one Aman Sahu (27) of Sahupada in Padampur.
A man was detained and during interrogation, he reportedly confessed to opening bank accounts in the names of six persons from Padampur, including the two suspected accounts. He allegedly handed over the passbooks and ATM cards to prime accused Chandani.
Based on these inputs, police nabbed Chandani and Rakesh from Mumbai and later arrested their associates from Padampur. A laptop, Rs 7 lakh cash, 38 ATM cards of various banks, 19 passbooks, 20 cheque books, SIM cards, a debit card and four mobile phones were seized from the accused.
Bargarh SP Prahlad Sahai Meena said Rizwan and Siddheswar lured residents of Padampur to open bank accounts in exchange for Rs 2,000- 3,000. They later handed over access to the prime accused who routed fraud money through these accounts. Investigation revealed that during 2024-25, the accounts saw huge transactions, with over Rs 7 crore allegedly linked to cyber fraud.
All the accused were produced in court. Investigation is underway to ascertain the involvement of other persons and trace additional financial links connected to the racket, Meena added.