Warangal: Fake gift gang held

Warangal: The Warangal Commissionerate Police on Friday busted an interstate gang of cheats involved in cases of online fraud. While the police had arrested 13 members of the gang, the other three belonging to Kolkata were at large. The police seized Rs 14.30 lakh in cash, 15 smartphones and scratch cards from them.

Warangal Commissioner of Police Tarun Joshi said that the gang used to call or send scratch cards to e-commerce customers and lure them with gifts such as cars convincing them that they have to pay road tax. For this, they were asked to deposit a certain amount to a particular bank account.

Tarun Joshi said that the gang chose Kolkata as their base to carry out the fraud in Telangana and Andhra Pradesh. Several such cases were registered in Intezargunj, Station Ghanpur, Zaffergadh, Geesugonda and Khanapur police stations. Against this backdrop, a task force team headed by DCP K Pushpa cracked the case.

The accused were traced using the latest technology and apprehended while leaving for Kolkata from the Warangal Railway station.

The arrested gang members were Ippa Raj Kumar, Thallapalli Damodar Gowd, Dasari Harish Gowd, Mekala Aditya, Akunuri Shravan Kumar, Gangadhar Rakesh, Porandla Vijay, Eeda Ravikumar, Darsha Ganesh, Sirikonda Vinod Kumar, Vollala Praveen, Gangadhari Ramchander, who hail form Mancherial district and Adepu Siddharth, who is from Peddapally district.

Three accused Prajeet, Sanjeev and Prakash, who hail from Kolkata were absconding.