Chandigarh, Apr 19 (IANS): The Special Task Force (STF) of Haryana Police has busted a gang which fraudulently claimed insurance money in the name of deceased cancer patients by showing their deaths in road accidents.

Three people have been arrested in this connection, a police department spokesman said on Friday.

The arrested accused include the gang's kingpin Pawan Bhoria of Sonipat district and two others - Mohit and Vikas.

"The gang used to first identify cancer patients and contact their family members. Subsequently, they got insurance of the cancer patients done from various companies. After showing death of the cancer patients in road accidents, they received insurance claims of deceased after lodging FIRs in different police stations in Haryana," the spokesman said.

"Immediately after this, treatment record of deceased person was removed by them from PGIMS (Post-Graduate Institute of Medical Sciences) Rohtak. In this, government employees like doctors, police personnel and of PGIMS Rohtak were involved," the spokesman said.

Director General of Police, Crime, P.K. Agrawal had received a complaint from Bharti Axa Life Insurance to this effect.

The investigation was handed over to the STF team that busted the gang and nabbed three accused. A number of suspicious documents have also been recovered from them, the spokesman said.

"This is first of its kind incident of fraud with insurance companies unearthed in the country. Primary interrogation revealed that these people were involved in fraudulent insurance claims with Iffco Tokyo, PNB Met Life, LIC, ICICI Lombard, HDFC Ergo, Edelwise Tokyo, AXA, Canara Kotak, HSBC, MAX Life, Future Gen, Bajaj Finance, LYF, Apollo Munich and Birla Sun Life," he added.