Ghaziabad: 3 held for stealing cheques from drop boxes

The Ghaziabad Police on Saturday arrested three members of an inter-state gang from Vijay Nagar for stealing cheques from drop boxes of different bank branches and encashing them later by forgery, officers said on Sunday, adding that they unearthed 31 cases linked to the gang across states.

Police identified the suspects as Amit Rai, 29, Vivek Kumar, 36, and Rahul Singh, 33, saying several others are absconding. Offices said they acted upon a tip-off about Rahul in Loni.

Officers said that the gang, by way of their modus operandi, allegedly duped up to ₹3.6 crore from residents across the country.

“Rai is from West Bengal and the mastermind of the gang. His accomplices visited different cities and would target bank branches. They would deliberately drop some faulty cheques in the drop boxes and would get these opened, saying that they dropped some cheque with faulty details. However, they would pick up some genuine cheques. Later, they would erase the names of original beneficiaries with some chemicals, and put names of their known people in whose names they opened different bank accounts,” said Sacchidanand, additional deputy commissioner of police (crime).

The gang obtained such dropped cheques from branches in cities like Mumbai, Lucknow, Kolkata, Vadodara, Nagpur, Bhopal, Chennai and Vijayawada, among others, and later allegedly changed names written on them.

Moreover, the gang members used to lure poor and needy people, and open bank accounts in their names and would allegedly encash the forged cheques. In return, such people would get a small amount for letting their accounts be managed for the gang’s purpose.