PM Modi envisaged a better, brighter, digital India. But I am not sure he envisaged this, even in his wildest dreams.
There is a village in Jharkhand, known as the ‘cyber zone’. But before you start applauding it, it is not what you think.
We are talking about this tiny village named Giridih in Jharkhand. According to a report in TOI, this village is home to 900 cyber crooks, and it has only 1,000 houses.
This came into light when cyber cell officials of the Ahmedabad crime branch searched these areas to capture Mohammed Jilani Ansari who had cheated people across 15 states using a couple of cellphones. Little did the Ahmedabad cops knew they were entering the Mecca of online fraud. A senior police official spoke told TOI,
We had kept the operation a top secret. However, when we were about to enter Binsmi village, a Jharkhand cop asked us whether we were looking for an online scamster. When we said yes, the Jharkhand cop murmured, “Cyber Zone mein aur kis ko khojo ge? (Who else will you look for in the Cyber Zone).
Ansari was pretty active in Gujarat but he has also extracted money from people in Rajasthan, Maharashtra, and Punjab. While speaking to TOI a crime branch official said.
He made about 200 calls a day. Every 10 to 15 calls, he managed to persuade the victim to give the ATM card number, the CVV number, and the one-time password. He used the information to transfer money from the victim’s bank account to one the 34 e-wallets he had created with 10 different email IDs.
The biggest challenge in front of the local police is that there are no case registered against these crooks as they cheat people from other states. However, Ahmedabad cyber cell’s operation in Jharkhand was a success and only after nabbing Ansari did they come to know that almost every house in the area had a cyber crook.