The Allahabad high court, Lucknow Bench, questioned the police action of arresting 119 people in an alleged international cyber fraud case before establishing through background investigation how the call centre was involved in defrauding US citizens.
The case was registered at the Cyber Crime police station in Lucknow East over allegations that a call centre operating from Summit Building, Gomti Nagar, was targeting US citizens through identity theft and financial fraud. The court noted that the record did not indicate any background investigation after the police received the information. It also pointed out that no complaint had been lodged by any US citizen, company or government organisation whose identity was allegedly stolen. The court noted that the FIR primarily attributed day-to-day management to Vikram Singh Parmar and Lalit, who allegedly identified themselves as manager and operations manager. Charles and Vineet Sharma were identified as alleged beneficiaries of the operations.
The bail release order was passed on September 9. Police received information from an informer around 10 pm on June 30 about the alleged illegal call centre and immediately raided the premises, according to the FIR. They arrested 119 people, including 92 men and 27 women, and seized 103 laptops, 68 iPhones, 109 Android phones, 116 headphones, 111 laptop chargers, 99 computer mice, a biometric attendance machine and eight routers. Jangid had no previous criminal history and had been in custody since July 2.
Granting bail to call-centre employee Mehul Jangid, Justice Manish Mathur observed that the police appeared to have “worked backwards” by first conducting a raid and making arrests and then pursuing the investigation. The court said the approach could amount to a “fishing expedition” and noted that the seriousness of cyber fraud placed a greater responsibility on the police to identify and arrest the actual perpetrators. Taking note of bail granted to co-accused with similar roles, the court said there did not appear to be any complicity of Jangid in the allegations at the bail stage, subject to evidence emerging during trial.
