A 66-year-old retired engineer of Damodar Valley Corporation (DVC) from Calcutta, who had come to Dhurwa to celebrate Diwali with his daughter’s family, lost Rs 1.10 lakh to cyber fraudsters.
Subhas Chandra Goswami, who lodged an FIR at Dhurwa police station on Sunday, said he had last swiped his State Bank of India card at an IDBI Bank ATM in Hinoo on November 2 to withdraw Rs 10,000 from the pension that had been transferred to his account a few days ago.
“Between 11.45pm on Saturday and 6am on Sunday, my account was nearly cleaned out. I had come to celebrate Diwali with my daughter and grandchildren, but now I am penniless,” Goswami said.
Preliminary investigation has revealed that Rs 40,000 was withdrawn in two transactions from one of the ATMs at City Center in Dhanbad on Saturday night. Around 12.30am on Sunday, Rs 30,000 was withdrawn from the same ATM kiosk. The remaining Rs 40,000 was transferred to a bank account of one Md Musabir Alam from another ATM located close to De Nobili School in Dhanbad.
“It looks like a skimmer device was fixed in the card slot of the IDBI ATM kiosk where Goswami had swiped his card. His data were stolen and later his card was cloned,” an official of Dhurwa police station said.
In Ranchi, this is the fourth instance in less than two mo-nths when cyber criminals have withdrawn heavy amo-unts by cloning ATM cards.
In September, three cases were reported where victims who had swiped their cards at an SBI ATM kiosk on Purulia Road lost their money.
Minakshi Kumari Ravi, a PhD scholar at Ranchi University, lost Rs 80,000 while Kadru resident Khalid Jamil Akhtar lost Rs 5,000. Ranchi-based journalist T. Vijay Raghvan was swindled out of Rs 69,500.