Mumbai: The police have busted a racket wherein the accused persons were found to be involved in opening bank accounts using Aadhaar card, PAN card and other documents of unknown persons and would use those accounts to divert proceeds from benami transactions of virtual currencies banned in India such as Crypto and USDT. Three persons have been apprehended by the police for running the said racket.
According to the police, the complainant in the case is Rajendra Bansode, Assistant Police Inspector in the Anti-Terrorism Branch, Chhatrapati Sambhajinagar police. Recently, the police had received confidential information that a man from Surat, Gujarat was staying at a hotel at Chhatrapati Sambhajinagar and with the help of his local partners for getting bank accounts opened using identity documents of different people using those accounts to divert proceeds from benami transactions of virtual currencies banned in India.
A police team then conducted a raid at the said hotel where the accused persons were staying and apprehended three persons - Utsavkumar Bhesania from Surat and Chhatrapati Sambhajinagar residents Hrishikesh Bhagwat and Anurag Ghodke. The police had seized multiple mobile phones and debit cards of different banks from the accused persons.
During the questioning Bhesania revealed that he had got bank accounts opened in the name of different people with the help of Hrishikesh and Anurag and had been using those accounts since 2022.
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The police are now probing further how the accused were diverting the proceeds from crypto currencies in the bank accounts. A case has been registered by the police in this regard under sections 316 (Criminal breach of trust), 318 (Cheating), 336 (Forgery), 338 (Forgery of valuable security, will, etc.) and 340 (Forged document or electronic record and using it as genuine) of the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita and section 66D (cheating by personation by using computer resource) of the Information Technology Act.
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