Two accused facing trial in the Nabha jailbreak case managed to run a fake government of India website from Punjab’s same high-security prison during May and June to cheat people.
The two — Aman alias Arman of Kurukshetra and Sunil Kalra of Ludhiana — had been arrested in the Nabha jailbreak case. They had helped six escapees and 15 attackers in November 2016.
The two have several cases of fraud registered against them. Aman is under trial, whereas Sunil Kalra is serving a life term in a murder case.
Both hatched a conspiracy in Nabha Jail to cheat people by creating a fake website with the domain name sdrfindia.org, which the site claimed to be under the aegis of the Ministry of Home Affairs.
According to the Punjab Police, the duo wanted to usurp money from gullible people by offering to recruit them as officers and volunteers in SDRF (state disaster response force).
The modus operandi involved the hiring of website creators who then unauthorisedly used emblems of the government of India and also copied content from the NDRF website ndrf.gov.in.
The DG has been named as Narendra Sood with various links leading to employee corner, job opportunity, tenders, honours and awards and even an RTI mechanism.
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But their cover was blown by the police.
Speaking over the phone with India Today, Sandeep Kumar Garg, SSP Patiala, said an FIR has been lodged to investigate the case.
While two accused have been arrested, at least one accused is on the run. Garg said, “We are probing the case with utmost seriousness. It is alarming that the duo could create a website of a national organisation with the intent of committing a huge scam and recruitment. They planned to take money from individuals to join as volunteers in SDRF. How they got a mobile phone and managed to create a website from inside the jail is part of the investigation.”
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Another senior officer of the Punjab Police said that unlike NDRF (National Disaster Response Force), SDRF is a state unit. However, this is not known to common people. The duo intended to take Rs 500 from individuals. They also planned to hire people at different ranks for recruitment.
WHAT ALL THEY DID
The accused contacted a woman in her 20s, a Hoshiarpur resident, through a matrimonial website where the gullible woman had mentioned that she is a website developer.
The accused befriended her and started talking to her on the pretext of marriage by posing himself as Avinash Singh Khattri, an officer of CBI who is looking after an SDRF project.
Sunil Kalra used to talk to her by posing himself as RK Khanna, IGP of CBI. Both of them allured the woman to create the website of SDRF India.
The woman then took the help of her brother, an experienced website developer who owns a company named Vintage Coders, to create the website sdrfindia.org.
The brother and sister purchased domain name srdfindia.org from GoDaddy.com for Rs 900 and got server access from HostatHash.com for hosting srdfindia.org for Rs 3,000 as a one-year fee on behalf of the accused.
The brother-sister duo got Rs 75,000 for their services and they got this amount transferred in their accounts from one Himanshu Makkar alias Sam Makkar, a resident of Jagraon, who is the nephew of Sunil Kalra.
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During investigation, it has been found that accused Aman got transferred around Rs 3,50,000 from one Gajendra Prasad Divakar, a resident of Jodhpur in the account of Himanshu Makkar. Out of this money, some amount was used for paying the website developers.
Gajendra Prasad Divakar owns a private school in Jodhpur and he has paid this money to accused Aman who introduced himself as an IB officer and assured Gajendra Prasad Divakar that he will help him get another school affiliation.
However, during the investigation, it has come to fore that both brother and sister were unaware of the accused’s identity and were not part of their conspiracy to cheat people.
Aman was arrested in this case on July 7 and the mobile phone along with SIMs used by him to contact Ruchi Walia and Sachin Walia have been recovered.
The mobile phones of Aman and Ruchi Walia will be sent for forensics tests.
Sunil Kalra was arrested in this case a day later.
Himanshu Makkar has also been made accused and is at large. Ruchi Walia and Sachin Walia have joined the investigation and the details of their bank accounts, payments received by them and also the mobile phone and laptop of Ruchi Walia have been seized.
Domain names and server details are being taken from GoDaddy and HostatHash, respectively.
