125 cybercriminals held by 102 Haryana Police teams in simultaneous raids across Nuh district

During the raids, the police teams seized a huge cache of ATM cards, smartphones, laptops, Aadhaar cards and card swipe machines along with other items. The suspects are being interrogated for further leads, the police said.

Giving more information about the raids, a spokesperson of the Haryana Police said, “After getting intelligence and other inputs related to cyber fraud in different areas of Nuh district, the police prepared a strategy to check cybercrime. On the basis of these inputs, the police first identified the hotspot of cybercrime, closely monitored the locations and then conducted raids simultaneously with a massive police force. Haryana Police formed separate teams of more than 5,000 policemen, including one SP, six additional SPs, 14 DSPs and other policemen.”

“Different teams of the police simultaneously raided 14 identified villages of Punhana, Pinangwa, Ferozepur Jhirka and Bichhore areas. The drive started at 11.30 pm last night and the action went on till late in the night. The total duration of this operation was 24 hours from the briefing of the police force to the search operation on various targets. Following directives of Haryana DGP P K Agrawal, DIG (STF) Simardeep Singh and SP Nuh Varun Singla performed a major role in making this entire operation successful,” the spokesperson said.

Singla said, “After the cyber training programme conducted in Bhondsi from April 4 to April 8, the outline of this special operation to crackdown on cyber thugs in Nuh was prepared after getting intelligence and other inputs. The police first fixed the targets by mapping 14 villages considered to be hotspots of cybercrime in the district. The villages where the raids were conducted are Khedla, Luhinga Khurd, Luhinga Kalan, Gokalpur, Godhola, Aminabad, Mahu, Gulalta, Jaimat, Jakhopur, Nai, Tirwara, Mamlika and Papda. Since April 8, 20 criminals involved in cyber fraud cases have already been arrested by the police in Nuh district.”

Giving out details about the persons apprehended and subsequent recoveries from them, the spokesperson added, “The highest number of 31 cyber criminals have been nabbed from Nai village, followed by 25 from Luhinga Kalan village, 20 each from Jaimat and Jakhopur, 17 each from Khedla and Tirwara, and 11 from Aminabad.”

The spokesperson added, “The Police have also nabbed one criminal carrying a reward of Rs 10,000. A total of 66 smartphones, 65 fake SIMs, 166 Aadhaar cards, three laptops, 128 ATM cards of different banks, two card swipe machines, one AEPS machine, six scanners, five PAN cards etc were seized from the arrested criminals and hackers. In addition, seven country-made pistols, two cartridges, two cars, four tractor-trolleys, 22 motorcycles have also been recovered. The raids were conducted by the police targeting 69 accused involved in cyber and other criminal cases.

In the initial investigation, the connection of the apprehended accused with cyber criminals of other states has also come to the fore and further investigation in this regard is underway, the police said.