Gurugram digital arrest scam: Court rejects bail plea of key accused, points to bank chairman role
In the order rejecting bail on July 21, Judicial Magistrate Arun Dabla found the allegations in the case to be 'grave and serious' and stated that the accused, Samudrala Venkateswarlu, committed a 'socio economic offence which has deep rooted impact on the society'.
The scam, which targeted a top advertising executive, was at the heart of a series of investigative reports published by The Indian Express last month on how digital scamsters moved crores in minutes across banks and state borders using and reusing 'mule' accounts.
In the Gurugram case — just one of the 1.23 lakh such crimes that were reported in 2024 involving Rs 1,935 crore — this newspaper reported that scamsters routed the Rs 5.8 crore from the victim's HDFC Bank account through three layers: an ICICI Bank account of a college student in Haryana's Jhajjar; 25 other accounts in 10 banks across the country; and, onward to 141 more accounts.
The second layer of 25 accounts included at least 11 in Sreenivasa Padmavathi Co-operative Urban Bank of Hyderabad where Samudrala was a director. At the time, The Indian Express spoke to the bank chairman P Srinivas Kumar who blamed officials at ICICI Bank for not raising the alarm. On Friday, Kumar told The Indian Express that he was 'unaware' of the latest court order and Samudrala's allegations. 'If someone approaches me officially, I will see what is to be done,' Kumar, who is also a lawyer, said.
The court's order also mirrors the other findings of this newspaper: a bulk of the stolen money (Rs 4.87 crore) was 'transferred' to accounts in the Hyderabad bank; the account-holders included Royya Sharadha (a tailor) and N Ravinder (a carpenter) who told police that Samudrala allegedly made them sign blank cheque books and withdrawal forms on the pretext of getting them jobs.
Samudrala was arrested on April 29 by a Special Investigation Team (SIT) of the Gurugram police, which is probing the case. During interrogation, Samudrala allegedly told police that he had been lodged in the Sabarmati Jail from September 2024 to January this year and then till February in the Rajkot Central Jail in similar cases.
In its latest order, the Gurugram court said, 'The court must be proactive in such cases where the accused dupe innocent and poor people and mercilessly take away all their hard earned money and deprived them of their life time savings… if such accused are dealt with leniency and they are granted bail in a casual manner then it would certainly send a wrong message in the society…' It noted that Rs 18.5 lakh has so far been recovered.
The Indian Express had also reported that the SIT was alerted by the Union Home Ministry's cyber fraud unit, Indian Cyber Crime Coordination Centre (I4C), that the 11 accounts in Hyderabad are also allegedly at the heart of 181 other such complaints. According to one complaint, Rs 21 crore had allegedly passed through these accounts in just three months.
The order rejecting Samudrala's bail stated: 'Investigation is still pending and the other co-accused are yet to be arrested…'
Ritu Sarin is Executive Editor (News and Investigations) at The Indian Express group. Her areas of specialisation include internal security, money laundering and corruption.
Sarin is one of India's most renowned reporters and has a career in journalism of over four decades. She is a member of the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ) since 1999 and since early 2023, a member of its Board of Directors. She has also been a founder member of the ICIJ Network Committee (INC). She has, to begin with, alone, and later led teams which have worked on ICIJ's Offshore Leaks, Swiss Leaks, the Pulitzer Prize winning Panama Papers, Paradise Papers, Implant Files, Fincen Files, Pandora Papers, the Uber Files and Deforestation Inc. She has conducted investigative journalism workshops and addressed investigative journalism conferences with a specialisation on collaborative journalism in several countries. ... Read More
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