Bihar police have busted a gang of alleged cyber criminals operating from a village in Nawada district, around 120km southeast from the state capital, and arrested 33 of them. Several others escaped. They used to con people on the pretexts of providing loans and business opportunities.

The cyber criminals were collectively operating from Thalposh village. The police raided the place on Tuesday and had a tough time cornering and taking them into custody. The family members of some of the accused also clashed with the raiding team.

“We had intelligence inputs about cyber crime being committed by some people from Thalposh village. Subsequently a raid was conducted in which 33 people have been apprehended,” Nawada superintendent of police (SP) Dhurat Sayli Savlaram told The Telegraph.

The arrested people are in the age group of 16 to 26 years. The juveniles among them will be presented before the juvenile justice board and send to remand homes.

A cache of 46 mobile phones, three laptops, fake stamps and seals, fake certificates, ATM cards, bank passbooks, various kinds of documents containing names, addresses and contact numbers of a large number of people have been seized in the raid.

“This is the biggest action against cyber crime in Bihar so far. The modus operandi of these boys and youths was to lure people by promising to get them loans from finance agencies like Muthoot Finance, help in getting petrol pumps, automobile dealerships, mobile towers and other business opportunities. They used to show fake documents to take the people into confidence,” Savlaram said.

The Nawada superintendent of police added that the assets of the people arrested would also be investigated because Patna High Court is currently monitoring cyber crime and banking fraud related cases.

“Details of our action and the arrested people will be provided to the income tax department and the enforcement directorate also. We will also try to contact the people who have been cheated by this group so that they can come forward and complain to the police,” she further said.

The arrested ones were graduates, undergraduates or studying in higher secondary. Some of them were also appearing in their school and college examinations.

A senior police officer told this newspaper on the condition of anonymity that a large group of cyber criminals were running a call-centre kind of operation from an orchard in the village, which was surrounded with mobile towers and used to get strong cell phone signals.

“They used to take people into confidence and cheat them of their money. They also forwarded web links to them, which if clicked, led to a loss of money from their bank accounts. Several members of the group escaped during the raid,” the police officer said.

Earlier in December last year, the police had arrested 17 alleged cyber criminals from Chakwai village in Nawada district. Several bank passbooks, ATM cards, cheque books and money were recovered from them.