An elderly Delhi resident’s money was allegedly fraudulently withdrawn from an ATM in Calcutta’s Beleghata minutes after he had made a transaction using his ATM card at a shopping mall in Delhi’s Mayur Vihar on Friday evening.
Santosh Kumar, 67, had used his debit card to pay at a store in Star City Mall in Mayur Vihar, Phase I Extension, around 6.20pm, he told The Telegraph over the phone on Saturday.
“Less than 10 minutes after the transaction, I received three text messages which said Rs 25,000 had been withdrawn from my account in three instalments. The money was withdrawn from an ATM at 53B Beleghata Main Road in Calcutta,” he said.
Kumar, who has worked in Calcutta, immediately realised that his ATM card had been hacked. He called the bank helpline and got his ATM card blocked and also lodged a complaint with the Delhi police.
Hundreds of Calcuttans have lost their money to a racket that stole their debit card details by installing a device called skimmer in ATMs in the city and cloning the cards. The cloned cards were then used to withdraw money from ATMs in Delhi.
Kumar’s case could be a rare one of a Delhi resident losing money in fraudulent withdrawals from an ATM in Calcutta.
The police are not ruling out the possibility of Kumar’s card details having been stolen with the help of a skimmer installed in a Delhi ATM.
Last year, at least 70 people in Calcutta had complained to the police that they had lost Rs 14 lakh in fraudulent withdrawals. The police said after an inquiry that the money had been withdrawn from multiple ATMs in Delhi using cloned cards.
A team from Calcutta police had camped in Delhi for days, tracked down suspects and arrested a Romanian gang. The gang had allegedly fitted skimmers in some unguarded ATM kiosks in Calcutta to steal card data.
While investigating Kumar’s complaint, Delhi police may have to seek help from Calcutta police and scan the footage of the CCTV camera at the ATM kiosk on Beleghata Main Road.
Officers in Calcutta police said on Saturday evening that they were yet to get any communication from the Delhi police.
