BHUBANESWAR: The Bhubaneswar-Cuttack Commissionerate Police, which arrested a 35-year-old woman for faking her own abduction to extort her brother, made good use of cyber technology to crack the case within 24 hours. Deploying a masked link on the WhatsApp number of the accused, the police tracked the whereabouts of Smruti Rekha Pani along with her accomplices, investigation has revealed.
Smruti had faked her own kidnapping along with her associates Pradeep Kumar Ola and Devi Lal to extort Rs 1 crore from her younger brother Subhasis Pani by posing as members of gangster Lawrence Bishnoi’s outfit.
To execute their plan, Smruti met Pradeep and Devi on Wednesday evening and headed towards Nayagarh. Before that, Pradeep took out the SIM card from her mobile phone to ensure police were unable to track them. Later in the evening, Pradeep and Devi used Smruti’s WhatsApp and contacted Subhasis over a voice call demanding ransom for her release.
On receiving a complaint from Smruti’s family members, police commissioner Sanjeeb Panda formed a joint team of Special Crime Unit, Special Squad, Cyber Crime, and Chandaka police to work on the case.
The major challenge was to trace Smruti as her mobile phone was switched off. Initially, police did not have suspicion it could be a fake kidnapping plot but when the cops analysed call detail records of the woman, they found out that she had contacted Pradeep frequently in the last few months. Police suspicion was strengthened when it was established that both Smruti and Pradeep’s last location was the same before they switched off their mobile phones.
The police started working on the clues and convinced Subhasis to transfer Rs 12 lakh into the bank account of the accused. The police used Subhasis’ WhatsApp number to send a reply on transfer of the ransom amount by asking the accused to check if they received the money or not.
“In the message, we had used a masked coded link. When the trio opened the link to confirm they have received the money, it gave away their location,” said a senior police officer.
Alongside, police also traced the bank account used by Pradeep which had separate mobile phone number linked to it. That number was found to be active and provided the same location as that of the WhatsApp message. Police teams were immediately dispatched and the accused were nabbed on Thursday night from Nayagarh district. Police had assured Subhasis that his money would be safe because the bank account to which it was supposed to be transferred was frozen.
