Bhubaneswar: In a surprising twist to the mysterious disappearance of four engineering students from the city, their parents Tuesday informed Commissionerate Police that they have been picked up by Sambalpur police personnel in a cyber fraud case. The parents of the missing students had filed a complaint February 12 at the Tamando police station. They met higher officials of the Twin City police to find their sons who went missing February 11 from their rental accommodation at Kalinga Vihar locality.
Samablpur police meanwhile has revealed that three persons including two engineering students who were reported missing have been arrested for duping Saroj Dash of Rs 2,00,000 on the pretext of arranging a personal loan worth Rs 3.90 lakh for him.
The accused were identified as Rehmat Ansari, 22, alias Chottu of Khaga police limits, Vishal Pandey, 21, of Govindpur police station area in Jharkhand and Sekhar Gautam, 21, of Bihar. Sekhar and Vishal are students of a private diploma engineering college on the outskirts of this city.
The accused allegedly siphoned off Rs 2,00,000 using the IDBI Bank debit card of the complainant February 5. Dash, who had applied for a personal loan of Rs 3.90 lakh, encountered problems while filing the application form. Subsequently, he searched online for the contact number of the financial agency.
However, he picked up the wrong phone number which belonged to the fraudsters. The latter in guise of assisting Dash to fill up the form collected all bank credentials of the complainant. Later, when the financial agency transferred the loan amount to the account of Dash, the accused withdrew Rs 2,00,000 using his debit card details.
With the arrest of three fraudsters including two engineering students by the Sambalpur police from here, it seems the capital city has turned into a safe haven for the Jamtara-like cyber criminal gangs. Earlier, the state crime branch busted a Jamtara-like gang operating from the Rasulgarh area of the city and arrested three cyber criminals.
This episode brought to light lack coordination between the Sambalpur and Commissionerate Police. Sambalpur police had reportedly not informed the local police station before arresting up the students from the city.