Gurugram, March 12: In a major breakthrough, a team from the cyber crime police station of Gurugram Police has bused a fake call centre and arrested 38 persons, including nine women, who used to dupe people on the pretext of recovering loans given via online Chinese and other loan applications.

As part of their modus operandi, the accused used to edit photos of their victims with nude (obscene) photos and send them to their friends and relatives through WhatsApp. The culprits then used to send threat messages through WhatsApp to the victims. The police have recovered Rs 1.70 lakh in cash, 27 laptops and 44 mobile phones from their possession.

According to the police, the SHO of cyber crime police station, Bijender Singh, received information that a fake call centre located on the first floor of Plot No-26 in Udyog Vihar Phase-1 was being run without prior permission and extorting money from innocent people. A team was constituted which conducted a raid at the fake call centre on Friday and arrested 38 persons in connection with the case. Fake Call Centres Busted in Delhi and Noida; 28 Arrested.

"The arrested persons disclosed that the owner of the call centre was Abhinav, a resident of Kheri Hojdarpur village in Jhajjar district, and Shantanu Kaushik from Rohini, Delhi," said Preet Pal Sangwan, ACP (Crime).

Their accomplices, Manish Kumar from Delhi and Pradeep Kumar from Bhiwani, used to provide secret information of the victims to them, which they used to threaten people. "The culprits used to provide loans through different online apps, including TX, PF, KARTA LOAN, SPEED LOAN, SUPER WALLET etc.," Sangwan said.

"To put pressure on the victims, the accused also adopted several tactics to extort money from them even before the prescribed time. They used morph photos and videos of people and share them with their contact list and recover money through different UPI IDs," Sangwan added.

(The above story first appeared on LatestLY on Mar 12, 2022 08:06 PM IST. For more news and updates on politics, world, sports, entertainment and lifestyle, log on to our website latestly.com).