BHUBANESWAR: The National Investigation Agency (NIA) on Monday questioned Abhijeet Sanjay Jambure, who has been arrested in the one-time password (OTP) scam, over his alleged links with high-ranking Pakistani intelligence operatives.
Sources said an NIA officer arrived in the state capital from Mumbai in the morning to interrogate Jambure who was arrested by the Special Task Force (STF) of Odisha Crime Branch on June 29 for reportedly being in regular contact with Pakistani intelligence and Army officers for the last several years. He had allegedly come in contact with Pakistani national Syed Danish Ali Naqvi through Facebook in 2018.
Naqvi, a Pakistani intelligence operative from Faisalabad, came to know that Jambure was working as a freelancer with the American education technology company - Chegg. He then allegedly struck a deal with Jambure to employ people to work on the latter’s behalf and pay him a commission. Jambure reportedly agreed and provided his user ID and password Chegg to Naqvi, who engaged some people and the payment got credited to his bank account in India.
“In return, Jambure made payments to agents working for Pakistan when they bought OTPs and mule bank accounts from the cyber fraudsters hailing from Odisha and other parts of the country,” said an STF officer. Naqvi later introduced Jambure to one of his friends - Abdul Hamid alias Khurram of Karachi who is reportedly a senior Pakistani Army intelligence officer having a vast network of agents in India.
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As per Khurram’s instructions, Jambure transferred money to Pakistani agents operating in India. Khurram had reportedly opened a WhatsApp account having an Indian number after purchasing the OTP from another accused - Pathanisamant Lenka (35) of Nayagarh’s Itamati. Lenka was a teacher in a private ITI college.
Jambure had made the payment to Lenka for selling the OTP to Khurram to open the WhatsApp account which was used for carrying out various nefarious activities including connecting with different Pakistani agents operating in India, said STF sources.
A three-member team of Maharashtra’s anti-terrorism squad (ATS) on Sunday had questioned Jambure for his alleged links with Pakistani agents. He was reportedly also in contact with a woman Pakistani agent operating from Bihar. She had purchased an OTP from Lenka and Jambure had made the payment to him, said sources.