Gang Used Fevikwik In ATMs To Cheat People, Arrested From Patna Express

Imagine you visit an ATM to withdraw some cash. You insert your card into the card slot and choose your preferred language, followed by your 4-digit Personal Identification Number (PIN) and the amount of cash you need. You collect the cash and move to complete the transaction by pulling out your debit card, but the card refuses to come out. It is stuck. What do you do?

Gangsters in Kolsewadi in Maharashtra's Thane district used this helplessness to cheat people. The catch is, they created this helplessness.

The Kolsewadi Police of Kalyan, Thane, have arrested a gang that allegedly cheated people by applying Fevikwik, an adhesive to ATM machines.

The investigation has revealed that the gang would wait for people at ATM centres. They would apply Fevikwik to the card slot to get hold of the customers' ATM cards.

Once the card was stuck and a user felt helpless, 'help' would arrive. A member of the gang would approach the user pretending to help and ask them to enter their ATM PIN three times. Even after entering the PIN, the money would not be dispensed. Meanwhile, the user would be asked to call a particular mobile number. The number provided would belong to another member of the gang.

The user would be asked to come to a particular location.

During the investigation, the police found that the gang allegedly obtained the ATM PIN from customers or collected their banking information through other means and then withdrew money from their accounts.

The police action came after a complaint about an attempt to cheat a citizen at an ATM centre in the Kolsewadi area of Kalyan East. In this case, police arrested Rajesh Kumar Yadav. During questioning, Rajesh told the police that three more people were involved in the operation and were in the Kongao area of Bhiwandi.

It was learnt that the three accused were travelling to Bihar on the Patna Express. The police chased them in a dramatic, cinematic-style pursuit and arrested them aboard the Patna Express.

The investigation has revealed that the gang had allegedly cheated several people using the same method.

The police are now investigating how many more people were cheated by this gang using the same method and how much money was been withdrawn from the victims' accounts.