Two more people have been arrested from Chopra in north Bengal in connection with the defalcation of funds meant for students to buy tablets or smartphones.

Officers of Kolkata Police said Manirul Islam and Mansur Islam — both from Chopra in North Dinajpur — were arrested by the city police for their alleged role in arranging mule accounts for the transfer of the swindled money.

The duo was arrested for allegedly cheating students of a school in Sarsuna where the fraud was reported.

Kolkata Police have received information about more than 100 students whose money has been fraudulently transferred to other accounts.

At least 33 such students are from the Sarsuna police station jurisdiction.

Earlier, five people — including Dibakar Das, the suspected mastermind of the scam — had been arrested. Das, the police said, is a permanent staff member at Maricha Goalgachh School.

As a part of the government’s Taruner Swapna Prakalpa scheme, students of the plus-II level studying in government schools are eligible to get ₹10,000 each for the purchase of smartphones or tablets for educational purposes.

According to the government scheme, students had submitted their bank
details with their schools and the schools had prepared a database of the students eligible for the grant and submitted it to the state administration.

The police suspect that the data had been tampered with at any of these layers so that the original recipients’ bank account details were replaced with details of accounts belonging to fraudsters. Consequently when the money was transferred, instead of the students, it reached the fraudsters’ accounts.

The accused duo from Chopra had allegedly arranged some of the people who had let out their bank accounts to transfer the students’ money against a commission for allowing their accounts to be used.

The duo was produced before a court in Chopra and brought to Calcutta on transit remand on Saturday.