Hyderabad: Brothers held for operating illegal online sand booking racket

Hyderabad: The cybercrime wing of Rachakonda police along with Special Operations Team (SOT) of LB Nagar zone arrested two persons in Boduppal for illegal sand booking on Wednesday.

The accused would do the illegal sand booking through the Telangana government's portal Sand Sales Management and Monitoring System (SSMMS) portal.

According to police, the accused brothers Sisodiya Adesh Jain and Sisodiya Arihanth Jain and their father had 4 lorries and do the sand business. With the growing demand for sand the accused duo hatched a conspiracy to book the lorry of sand for customers on their behalf and earn commission on it. By doing such an act, they used to charge Rs. 1500 to 2000 for each booking.

Mahesh Bhagwat, Rachakonda police commissioner said that the accused duo had knowledge of online booking and as the portal for booking sand is open from 12pm till 12:15pm they used to adopt the auto-fill option on the tool to book for multiple customers.

He said, "If a customer is directly booking sand through the portal then he/she has to do it within 15 minutes and if the booking is successful then the customer will get the booking details by 12:30pm. But the main accused Adesh Jain searched on the internet & YouTube for the multiple solutions and found information about the auto fills on the Paytm advertisement."

"Then, he contacted its representative and purchased the auto fill software in accordance with its terms & conditions and by paying the required amount. Later, the domain added the add-ons to the Google search engine in the laptop. Since then the accused no 1 started rapid booking of the sand on behalf of customers by using such auto fills software & thereby earned an amount of Rs.1500 to Rs.2000 for each vehicle. His brother helped him in collecting the orders from needy customers," stated the officer.

"By doing such a criminal act, the brothers were able to earn more than Rs. 50 lakh and they also created Benami accounts by using their friend's credentials and stored the amount in multiple accounts. When we raided they had a net cash of Rs. 5, 86,367 in their residence. However they were booked under section 420 of IPC and section 66C & 66D of IT Act," said the officer.