DNA

Mumbai, Apr 23: In yet another case of cyber crime, the Cuffe Parade police on Saturday arrested Chandrakant Kothari and is now on the lookout for three others in a phishing case. The scam came to light after a Switzerland-based doctor Venugopal Ajanta realised that Rs14 lac had been debited from his HDFC account without his knowledge. Ajanta alerted his brother, Srinivas, who then lodged a complaint at the Cuffe Parade police station. 

Confirming the incident, deputy commissioner of police Brijesh Singh said, “A team of policemen are trying to trace the accused from the information they have received from Kothari.”

While one of the accused has been traced to Gujarat, another is said to be in Tamil Nadu, the police said.

According to the police, on April 12, Rs five lakh was transferred from Ajanta’s account to one Virendra Singh, who works with Specific Trading. Later, another Rs nine lac was transferred out of Ajanta’s account. The entire money was then transferred Chandrakant Kothari’s account on April 14.

A senior officer investigating the case said, Kothari was asked to crack the net banking password for which he was promised two per cent of the total amount by the accused. “It seems Ajanta opened a fake email alert and logged on to a webpage that looked identical to the HDFC website,” said the officer.

The police said that one of the accused, Bansal Javeri is from Bhavnagar and the other Nisaar is from Tamil Nadu.

 “Kothari is not cooperating in the investigation. The exact role of the other accused will be known only after we arrest them,” the officer said.

Police claimed that Kothari was well versed with computers and hence was chosen for the job. However, the police is still investigating whether the accused got Ajanta’s account details through any particular source.