Delhi Police have arrested three men for allegedly running a cyber fraud operation from a moving car, using the vehicle as a mobile call centre to change locations and evade tracking. The arrests followed a complaint from a Madhya Pradesh resident who was allegedly cheated of Rs 65,000 in a fake insurance refund scheme.
The complainant, Neelesh Vishwakarma of Umaria district, was allegedly told that he had to pay processing fees to receive a refund of Rs 45 lakh invested in insurance policies. Police began investigating after suspicious transactions linked to a bank account in the name of Himanshu Rathore were flagged on the National Cyber Crime Reporting Portal.
Rathore was apprehended first, after which the investigation led police to Lokesh Tomar, 37, and Tushar, 35. Police said the accused used a car as their operational base and frequently changed locations, making it harder for investigators to trace the activity to a fixed premises.
Technical analysis and surveillance eventually helped the police track the vehicle to Old Kondli, where Tomar and Tushar were intercepted. Tomar, a resident of Old Kondli, is suspected of coordinating the operation and arranging mule accounts. Tushar, who is from Shahdara, allegedly contacted victims and induced them to share one-time passwords and banking credentials while impersonating officials.
Police allege that Rathore, a resident of Kalyan Puri, provided bank accounts for commission. Investigators suspect that some of the accounts may have been opened using false address details. The alleged use of mule accounts illustrates how cyber-fraud operations can separate the person interacting with a victim from the accounts used to receive and move the money.
The seizures included the vehicle, seven mobile phones, 15 bank, debit and Metro cards, five PAN cards, four Aadhaar cards or copies, six cheque books, three passbooks, a signed cheque, two rent agreements and 11 photographs. Police also recovered nine pages containing customer details and a suspected forged stamp of the National Payments Corporation of India.
The case combines digital investigation with conventional surveillance and document tracing. The initial alert came through the national cybercrime reporting system, while the vehicle was located through technical analysis and field surveillance. The recovery of banking instruments, identity documents and customer information is expected to form part of the continuing investigation.
Delhi Police are probing whether the accused are connected to other cyber-fraud cases and possible interstate networks. Further investigation will focus on the alleged use of mule accounts, the source of the customer details and the suspected forged NPCI stamp.
