A 32-year-old man was arrested on Thursday night from his rented accommodation in Thakurpukur for allegedly duping at least five persons by creating fake websites of popular finance companies.

An officer of the Bidhannagar commissionerate said five complaints had been lodged with the cyber crime police station in Salt Lake, based on which Shekhar Singh Azad was arrested.

The officer said Azad, a BTech in computer engineering, had opened at least 25 fake websites of non-banking finance institutions. He allegedly offered through the websites various types of loans — including personal, vehicle and appliance loans — at interest rates lower than those offered by the companies.

“Azad had used logos and fonts of the non-banking financial institutions in the fake websites. It was hard for the victims to tell that the sites were fake. These websites had no link to the original websites run by the companies whose logos he was using,” the officer said.

Once a person logged into any of the websites allegedly created by Azad, he or she was asked to enter personal details like name, phone number and address. The website would then ask them to upload photographs of their identity cards such as PAN and Aadhaar cards.

“Once this was done, the victims were redirected to a page where they had to pay a processing fee. However, no loan amount was sanctioned after making the payment,” the officer said.

Azad, from Buxar in Bihar, has been charged under various sections of the IPC, including 420 (cheating), 419 (cheating by personation), 465 (forgery) and 471 (using as genuine a forged document or electronic record). He was produced in a court in Salt Lake on Friday and remanded in police custody till August 17.

Vikek Sharma, Azad’s lawyer, said his client ran a website designing business and had created the websites for which he had been arrested for a client.