Gang cheating people at ATMs busted, two held
The arrested duo told us that they used to disturb the functioning of a common key of ATM keyboard using adhesive. They used black eyeliner to conceal the white traces of adhesive at the key.
Delhi Police have busted a gang who allegedly used to cheat people at ATM booths by withdrawing cash from their accounts after surreptitiously exchanging their ATM cards with fake cards, police said on Wednesday.
Two members of the gang were arrested on Saturday from outside an ATM outlet in south Delhi’s Deoli while they were looking for a potential victim. Police said the cheats were inspired by a popular television crime show.
Police said the gang members used to tamper with some keys of the ATMs, using adhesive due to which the transactions of ATM users could not be completed.
One of the members would trick the ATM user into sharing the ATM card’s secret pin code after offering to help the person in withdrawing cash. During the process the cheat would exchange the person’s ATM card with a similar but fake plastic card.
Once the person leaves the ATM booth, the cheats would remove the adhesive from the keyboard and use the exchanged ATM card to illegally withdraw cash. By the time the ATM user receives money transaction messages and rushes to the ATM booth, the cheats would disappear.
Ishwar Singh, deputy commissioner of police (south), said ten cases of cheatings were solved with the arrest of the two, identified as Abhishek Kumar alias Vipul,23, and Anil Kumar Sinha, 27, both from Kolta Mubarakpur in south Delhi. Sixteen debit cards of various banks, two tubes of adhesive, two black eyeliners, and a motorcycle purchased from the ill-gotten money were seized from the arrested duo.
“The arrested duo told us that they used to disturb the functioning of a common key of ATM keyboard using adhesive. They used black eyeliner to conceal the white traces of adhesive at the key,” said the DCP.
During the interrogation, the two revealed that they used the ill-gotten money on purchasing branded and expensive clothes, shoes, wrist watches and other hobbies. They also spent the money to impress their girlfriend by taking them to nightclubs for parties, the officer said.
“I have ordered the constitution of a SIT, which will be headed by an inspector general of police,” he added.
The government later issued a circular stating BK Singh, inspector general of police, intelligence, will head the SIT.
“She had met me just a week ago but she had not informed me about any threat to her life,” he added.
The Union home ministry also sought a report from the state government.
Siddaramaiah said he personally examined CCTV videos and in the footage, a person wearing a helmet is seen approaching Lankesh, who was opening the gate to her house to park her car. “This person is seen firing at her, and because of the impact of the shots that were fired at close range she falls back inside her compound,” the chief minister added.
Lankesh’s murder prompted spontaneous events across 10-odd cities to protest against what the Editors Guild of India called a “brutal assault on the freedom of the press”. In Delhi, Bengaluru, Chennai, Hyderabad, Kolkata, Pune, Lucknow, Patna and many other cities, ordinary citizens joined writers and journalists in demonstrating against the killing and demanding strict action. “The silencing of a journalist in this manner has dangerous portents for Indian democracy,” said the Indian Women Press Corps.
Lankesh’s brother, Indrajit, also expressed confidence that the culprits would be traced with the help of CCTV footage and the journalist’s mobile phone. “Her mobile phone also contains a lot of evidence and clues... Investigation is underway,” he added.
Her death brought the spotlight back on three similar killings of rationalists and left-leaning thinkers since 2013 -- Maharashtra’s Narendra Dabholkar, Govind Pansare, and Karnataka’s MM Kalburgi. In all cases, probes have seen little progress though chief minister Siddaramaiah ruled out an immediate connection between these incidents and Lankesh’s murder.
Politicians sparred over her death, with Congress president Sonia Gandhi saying she asked Siddaramaiah to ensure swift justice. “Anybody who speaks against the RSS/BJP is attacked & even killed. They want to impose only one ideology which is against the nature of India,” said party vice-president Rahul Gandhi.
But the BJP attacked the state government, blaming it for delay in the investigations into Kalburgi’s murder and demanding a CBI probe into Lankesh’s death “Law and order of Karnataka is the responsibility of the state government, under Congress. Holding the prime minister responsible for it is wrong,” said Union minister Nitin Gadkari.
Many journalists and intellec-
Her government is facing international pressure over 125,000 Rohingyas fleeing to Bangladesh in a fortnight after a military offensive against rebels in Rakhine.
“We have discussed committing Indian assistance to the Rakhine state development programme because we really believe that the medium-term way of addressing problems in the Rakhine area is really to look at development aspects,” foreign secretary S Jaishankar briefed the media.
Though India extended assistance for Rakhine, Modi’s government has taken a strong stand on an influx of about 40,000 Rohingyas over the years, vowing last month to deport them all.
Suu Kyi, the de facto leader of Buddhist-majority Myanmar, thanked India for taking a strong stand on the “terror threat” faced by her country.
She said India and Myanmar jointly can ensure that terrorism is not allowed to take root on their soil or in neighbouring countries.
India’s stand is viewed a strategy not to scupper its ties with Myanmar when Suu Kyi is increasingly under pressure over the Rohingya crisis, which UN secretary general Antonio Guterres warned could lead to ethnic cleansing and regional destabilisation.
India shares a 1600km boundary with Myanmar along four northeastern states. Militants from the Northeast are known to have bases in the neighbouring country that the government there doesn’t approve, much to the relief of New Delhi.
Besides, a friendly Myanmar is important for India’s maritime security amid growing Chinese ambitions in the seas of the region.
Modi’s three-day visit is expected to build on the age-old ties with Myanmar, formerly Burma, home to a large population of Indian immigrants, especially in Rangoon that has been renamed Yangon.
During an interaction in Yangon with people of Indian origin, he said his government had taken big and tough decisions such as demonetisation of two high-value banknotes last November to fight corruption.
“A handful of corrupt people were making 125-crore people pay for their misdeeds. This was not acceptable for us,” he said in his 35-minute address.
The big takeaways of his first bilateral — after having visited Myanmar in 2014 for an AseanIndia Summit — were the fasttracking of a host of long-pending projects.
New Delhi will upgrade the Yagyi-Kalewa road for Rs 177 crore, which is part of the IndiaMyanmar-Thailand highway. A new border crossing will be opened in Manipur’s Moreh, which is a flourishing trade post for people of both countries.
India will also assist building an airport in the country.
“We are looking at fuel, we are looking at power transmission, we are looking at solar, we are looking at LED,” foreign secretary Jaishankar said, explaining possible Indian cooperation on energy.
In the health care sector, he said India has upgraded three hospitals in Myanmar.
“We are committed to building a hospital in Nay Pyi Taw. That is a new commitment,” he added.
The chief’s comments come more than a week after India and China ended a 73-day border faceoff in Doklam plateau near Sikkim. Troops were locked in a tense stand-off during which officials in Beijing hinted at drastic consequences such as a wider conflict. Soldiers from the two country also traded blows and threw stones at each other in a more northern region – in Ladakh – while the Doklam problem went on.
“Whether these conflicts will be confined or limited in space and time or whether these can expand into an all-out war along the entire front (remains to be seen)…with the western adversary taking advantage of the situation developing along the northern border is very much likely,” Rawat said.
The army chief said on Wednesday that there was no denying that India has to stay prepared for conflict on its northern and western borders.
This is not the first time military leaders have warned of Pakistan possibly taking advantage of hostilities between India and China.
Three years ago, the Indian Air Force told a parliamentary panel that Pakistan would certainly fish in troubled waters if China were to launch offensive operations against India. The IAF, however, said that China may not pose “a collusive threat” if hostilities were to break out between India and Pakistan.
Threats on two fronts, the IAF said in 2014, would be difficult to tackle but the force was prepared.
But two years later, in March 2016, Air Chief Marshal BS Dhanoa (then vice chief) said the air force did not have sufficient number of warplanes to fight a twofront war, setting off alarm bells in the government.
“It was probably the most difficult case to crack,” said the senior IGIA official. According to the official, the accused said that it is easy to find such incognito gold items in Dubai.
The official described a decade-long history of gold smuggling at IGIA. The crime, the official said, was most popular in the 1980s and 90s, when one of the favoured techniques was wearing secretly-hidden golden shoe soles. Before the recent surge in activity, gold smuggling had declined in response to increased duties India placed on gold in the 2015-2016 budget and the reduced liquidity in the country after demonetisation.
Now that it has been almost a year since demonetisation, the gold-smuggling market is rebounding, the official said.
While IIT-Bombay retained its position in the 351-400 band, its counterparts at Delhi and Kanpur slipped from the 401-500 segment in 2016 to 501-600 this year. IIT-Madras fared even worse, figuring only in the 601-800 band.
The IIT Council had cleared the Vishwajeet project last year. Its institutes at Delhi, Bombay, Madras, Kharagpur, Kanpur, Roorkee and Guwahati were picked as the likely beneficiaries of the scheme.
In its note, the finance minister also recommended that the human resource development ministry ask IITs to construct world-class laboratories through existing grants or the recently launched Institute of Eminence scheme. “Under the Institute of Eminence scheme, 10 select government institutes will be given approximately ₹1,000 crore. The finance ministry suggested that the IITs compete for that scheme instead of expecting funds through the Vishwajeet project,” an official said.
Though IITs are hailed as premier institutes in domestic academic circles, they usually fail to match up to foreign universities. The human resource development ministry had proposed the Vishwajeet project to provide them with the financial support required to meet international infrastructural and academic standards.
The overall budget of IITs received a hike of ₹2,468 crore in 2017-18 to touch ₹ 7,856 crore.
INSTITUTES AT DELHI, BOMBAY, MADRAS, KHARAGPUR, KANPUR, ROORKEE, GUWAHATI WERE LIKELY BENEFICIARIES OF THE PROJECT