HYDERABAD: Three persons, who stole cheques worth `40 lakh deposited in dropboxes of various ATM centres, were arrested by the Ramgopalpet police on Wednesday. The police seized `16 lakh in cash and incriminating material from the offenders. Three accused are still absconding.
After committing the theft, the gang members fabricated the stolen cheques in favour of their names and withdrew the amount.
According to police, one S Kiran Kumar, who runs a hardware business, lodged a complaint with the police stating that he had presented a cheque issued by his customer in the name of his firm Satyavarapu Hardwares for an amount of `2.66 lakh in HDFC Bank for clearance on February 4. Later, he came to know that the cheque was cleared in the name of Paresh Vishal Kumar from UCO Bank, MG Road, Secunderabad. Based on the complaint, police registered cases and took up investigation.
During the course of investigation, police found that in the 15 days, as many as nine cases of misappropriation of huge amounts through forged and fabricated cheques were reported at various places in the city.
“The sleuths then collected the Closed Circuit Television (CCTVs) footages from several ATM Centres and analysed them after which the accused were identified and arrested. Three persons including the kingpin of the gang and an amount of `16.34 lakh in the accounts of the offenders was freezed,” said the Deputy Commissioner of Police (DCP), VB Kamalasan Reddy.
The accused have been identified as Maneesh Genaram Prajapathi, 35, hardware items seller and a resident of Mumbai; Parekh Vishal Kumar, 25, working as a Aadhar card technician and a resident of Old Bhoiguda and Harchand Ram, 32, resident of Old Bhoiguda and native of Rajasthan. The other accused Gulshan, Chelaram and Manish Gupta are still absconding.