Hackers steal salary of CISF staff
Money debited from accounts of several personnel, FIR registered.
New Delhi: In what appears to be a targeted breach of online-security, large sums of money were debited from the SBI (State Bank of India) salary accounts of several Central Industrial Security Force (CISF) personnel at various locations in the city over the past 10 months.
Interestingly, amounts in thousands have been withdrawn from their salary accounts on the day salaries are credited or on the adjoining dates thereafter. Though the ATM card remained with the personnel, money was debited from various locations. The victims have filed police complaints, but no breakthrough has been made in any of the cases so far.
In a recent case, when salary was credited to the account of CISF personnel on July 31, four persons became alleged victims of the same modus operandi and lost a major part of their salaries.
Three of them — SI Abinash, and constables Manoranjan Sahu and Rajasi Bai Gujjar — have filed police complaints at Roop Nagar police station in North Delhi. They have lost Rs 29,000, Rs 80,000, and Rs 40,000 respectively in multiple transactions through their account from various ATMs in the city. “We have registered FIR in all of the cases. The investigation is under way. We will find out if the transactions pertain to the same chain or is different in every case,” said DCP (South) Jatin Narwal.
The CISF personnel said that there are 15 more of them who have also lost their money from their salary accounts through online fraud. But in all these cases, the original ATM card was in their pockets, thus leaving them baffled about the repetition. While senior CISF officers were wary of saying that there was any pattern, even spokesperson Manjit Singh acknowledged that there were four to five cases. One of the victims of online fraud, who wished not to be named, said: “Soon after my salary was credited on October 30 last year, '40,000 was debited from a South Delhi bank ATM around midnight while I was in North West Delhi’s Puth Khurd.” He added that little progress has been made in the FIR that he registered thereafter.