Kolkata, The Kolkata Police on Thursday identified one more ATM in addition to two others where the machines were allegedly used to clone people’s card details and fraudulently withdraw around Rs 18-20 lakh from bank accounts here in the past one week, a senior officer said.
Police said they have so far received 77 complaints of fraudulent withdrawals from the affected account holders, primarily of Canara Bank and Punjab National Bank (PNB).
“We have identified an ATM outlet of Kotak Mahindra Bank in south Kolkata’s Elgin Road where the scheming device was used to clone people’s card details. This too was an unmanned ATM outlet. Our department has also received one more complaint of fraudulent withdrawal taking the tally of complaints to 77,” Joint Commissioner of Kolkata Police Praveen Tripathi said.
Two other unguarded city ATM outlets of Canara Bank and Punjab National Bank, where such fraud allegedly took place, were identified previously.
The city police department had already formed a Special Investigation Team (SIT) on Wednesday to probe the large-scale bank fraud that created panic among a section of citizens and hinted that an inter-state racket might be involved in the case as the unauthorised withdrawals were done from certain ATMs in Delhi.
The officer also revealed that some high profile persons in the city including a former Calcutta University Professor and a renowned radio jockey at a private FM station have fallen prey to the act of fraud.
The bank fraud came to light earlier this week after several people approached the city police with complaints that amounts ranging from Rs 4,000 to Rs 40,000 have been debited from their bank accounts, fuelling suspicion that they had fallen victim to skimming devices planted on some ATM machines in the city.
Canara Bank, which is one of the banks largely hit by the fraud, said they have identified around 37 customers from a particular south Kolkata branch and said that the bank is taking necessary steps to refund the affected customers’ money within a week.
