Mumbai: The Kalachowki police have arrested a youth from Rajasthan allegedly involved in cyber crimes including sextortion. The village, Galiyana in Dungarpur District, is an alleged hub of cybercriminal activities, the police said, who had to fish out their target accused after managing stake outs for several days. The accused may have several cases against him involving cyber-cheating cases, police added.
The arrested accused is identified as Mahendra Nathulal Patidar, 24. The matter first surfaced on May 7 when the complainant approached the police about a sextortion case he fell prey to. According to him, he received a video call from an unknown girl who asked him to undress, which she recorded and started blackmailing him. In this process, the victim was blackmailed to pay over Rs. 61,890, which he paid through his NSDL bank account.
The investigation team led by PI Dilip Daingde, consisting of PSI Rajendra Chavan and Shital Mane, police constables Shubash Rasave and Gopal Chavan, under the leadership of senior police inspector Sanjay Mohite began the investigation after registering the FIR - first, with the technical analysis.
The mobile numbers which the fraudsters used to blackmail and extort money from the victim were traced, followed by obtaining the call data records (CDR), subscriber details records (SDR), IPDR (Internet Protocol Detail Record (IPDR) and logs of bank transactions of the suspect. The investigation was then narrowed down to Patidar and based on his location, a team of police officers were deployed to Rajasthan.
Once they reached Galiyana village, the cops realised that the majority of villagers were involved in cybercriminal activities, and that it was a hub of cybercrime. The first breakthrough in the case for the cops was when the suspect withdrew money from a bank account - one used in the crime - from an ATM. “The ATM had a CCTV camera and we obtained the footage to know who withdrew the money,” said a police officer, adding that using his photograph taken from the CCTV camera footage, they started inquiring about the man.
“We looked for him at his village but he was not there. We started tracing his live location - which showed Udaipur instead. However, the location was not concrete, so the search continued. We searched at almost 70 hotels in Udaipur city and finally found the accused,” added the official.
Police seized three mobile phones and nine SIM cards from the accused and it is suspected that he has a whole team working along and above him in undertaking the cybercrime.
