Cops said the crooks allegedly siphoned almost Rs 2.4 crore from 37 policies belonging to 22 people. Special commissioner HGS Dhaliwal said a thorough probe was being conducted. According to police, the gang had procured the data of policy holders whose maturity amount was lying unclaimed with the company and decided to claim it on their behalf.
“They took poor people from jhuggis to the Aadhaar centre to get their details updated, in place of those of the policy holder. Thereafter, they applied for their PAN and voter cards. Subsequently, bank accounts were opened digitally using the e-Aadhaar authentication process,” said Dhaliwal.
He added that 55 PAN cards, 33 Aadhaar cards, 32 voter ID cards, 46 debit cards, 73 cheque books and six swipe machines have been seized.
The scam came to fore after cops received a complaint from Max Life Insurance alleging about Rs 51 lakhs, pertaining to the surrendered or maturity amount of two Max policy holders, Ashutosh Joshi and Abdul Hye Choudhary, had been fraudulently claimed. The siphoned money, the firm said, was received by some unidentified persons whose requests for refund were processed through their ex-employees.
“It was later discovered by the company that Abdul Hye Choudhary had passed away in March 2018 and no such request was made on his behalf,” said DCP (cyber cell) Prashant Gautam.
An FIR was registered on March 28 and a team comprising ACP Sunil Panchal and inspectors Arun Tyagi and Devender Dahiya was formed.
“Analysis of documents revealed several accounts were opened in Equitas Small Finance Bank, Kotak Mahindra Bank, Bandhan Bank, Yes Bank, IDBI Bank and Jana Small Finance Bank in the name of policy holders,” the special CP said.
It was found that most of the money received in these accounts was transferred to accounts of ‘Rinku Sales’, whose proprietor was a man named Prem Prakash, with an address of Kabir Nagar, Rana Pratap Bagh, Delhi. However, the address was not traceable.
After comprehensive analysis and exhaustive field investigation, the team finally managed to identify the address of Prem Prakash at Sant Nagar, Burari. He was caught and interrogated, which led to the arrest of four others.
The accused, Rohit Kumar Aggarwal, had worked with Max Life Insurance as a senior executive and had access to data of policy holders. He identified policy holders whose surrendered/maturity amount had been lying unclaimed and gave the details to Sujeet Kumar Mishra, an employee of Max Life Insurance at its Dwarka office.
Another associate, Vikas, was working at the Aadhaar centre at SBI, Gujranwala Town, and got the details updated without taking any relevant documents in lieu of money. The fifth accused, Chandan Jain, was also arrested.
