The Enforcement Directorate has arrested four people in an alleged international call-centre fraud and money-laundering case linked to Hyderabad, bringing the total number of arrests to seven. The agency said the group operated a fraudulent call centre in Madhapur before shifting operations to Patiala after police raids.
Harshil Nayanbhai Raval, Jaswant Singh, Chetan Munjal and Pranav Pithadia were arrested in Patiala and brought to Hyderabad. The ED said they were arrested on Tuesday under Section 19(1) of the Prevention of Money Laundering Act, 2002, and produced before the special PMLA court in Nampally on Wednesday. The court remanded them to ED custody.
According to the agency, the group allegedly targeted US citizens through call centres in Hyderabad and Punjab, using forged government documents and fake identity cards. Investigators said the alleged proceeds were channelled into real estate, gold, vehicles and other businesses. The total alleged proceeds were estimated at Rs 261 crore, equivalent to $27.39 million.
The case has involved enforcement activity across several cities and commercial locations. The ED said it searched four premises in Patiala, Pune and Chandigarh on September 15 under Section 17 of the PMLA. During the searches, officials found two call centres in Patiala and one in Pune, with around 220 people working across the centres.
The agency said forensic examination of 79 digital devices had been completed. The devices allegedly contained call-centre chats, ledgers, call data, victim details and cryptocurrency wallets. Investigators also found that the group had allegedly purchased about two million US telephone numbers, along with the names, addresses and ages of the individuals linked to them. Many of the numbers, according to the ED, belonged to elderly people.
The data was allegedly uploaded to auto-diallers hosted on servers in Germany and Finland. The ED said calls or messages were made to 6,463 US phone numbers and that investigators had so far identified 549 victims, many of whom were born in the 1940s.
The alleged movement of funds into real estate and other assets adds a property and asset-tracing dimension to a case that began with call-centre operations. The agency’s account indicates how commercial premises, digital infrastructure, identity data and financial channels were allegedly used across multiple locations rather than through a single Hyderabad site.
Three other accused persons had been arrested earlier in the case. Vikas Nimar was arrested on July 27, Tarachand Nimar on August 5 and Imran Asgari on October 10. The ED said all three are lodged in Chanchalguda Central Jail.
The latest arrests and the seizure of digital and documentary material form part of the agency’s continuing investigation. The ED has not indicated that the investigation is complete, and further proceedings in the PMLA case will continue before the special court in Nampally.
