Bhubaneswar: A person accused of looting people using ATM cards was injured in a police encounter in the Odisha capital Sunday, an officer said.
Two other associates of the accused were also arrested, he said.
The incident took place near Kesura in Badagada police station area in Bhubaneswar around 3am, when a police team attempted to arrest 25-year-old Deepak Kumar, who hails from Bihar, and his associates who were wanted for duping people using ATM cards, he said.
Acting on a tip-off about the presence of the gang on Bhubaneswar-Puri bypass, a team of officers of the Bhubaneswar-Cuttack Police Commissionerate launched an operation to nab them.
Upon spotting the police team, the gang members tried to flee the spot and opened fire on the personnel, the officer said.
“Police retaliated in self-defence, leading to bullet injury on the left leg of one of the accused… he is undergoing treatment at AIIMS here,” he said.
The police also nabbed two other gang members who were trying to escape from the spot. They have been identified as Deepak Kumar Pande (24) and Abhisekh Kumar Singh (32), who are also from Bihar.
The accused were in Puri for the last three days and they committed ATM fraud there. They were also wanted in several similar cases in Ranchi, he said.
Speaking on the modus operandi of the gang, he said that the accused used to apply adhesive on the card punching slot of the ATM and wait outside. They also pasted a board displaying a mobile number at the ATM counter, identifying it as the helpline number of the bank concerned.
When a customer punched the card and withdrew the money but not the card as the adhesive had been applied, he or she called the helpline number displayed by the accused.
When they called the helpline number, the gang cunningly collected the password and bank details of the customer. When the customer left the counter after being convinced that the issue would be resolved, they used a sharp knife to pull out the card from the slot and subsequently withdrew cash using it, the officer said.
The gang had mastered duping the customers and stealing their money, he said.
The police have seized a country-made pistol, a cartridge, 12 ATM cards, a car, three mobile phones, quick-fix adhesive, a knife and other incriminating articles from the accused persons.
A case has been registered with Badagada police station and further investigation was underway, he added.
PTI
