0
Comment(s)
*
* The moderation of comments is automated and not cleared manually by indianexpress.com.
Patiala MP and wife of Punjab Chief Minister Amarinder Singh Preneet Kaur.
Patiala MP and wife of Punjab Chief Minister Amarinder Singh, Preneet Kaur, fell prey to an online banking fraud in which Rs 23 lakh were fraudulently withdrawn from her SBI account over several days in July.
The alleged king-pin of the fraud, Atta Ul Ansari (30), a resident of Fofnad village in Jamtara, Jharkhand, has been arrested by the local police and would be brought to Patiala on Thursday.
Sources in the police said, Ansari contacted Preneet in the last week of July, when she was attending the Parliament session and asked for her debit card number, ATM PIN, CVV and even the OTP received on her phone.
He reportedly pretended to be an SBI bank manager and asked her to provide the details as he wanted to expeditiously deposit her salary in the account.
Best of Express Premium
Also Read | 2015 Sacrilege Cases: On CBI closure report, govt tries to justify police stand to miffed MLAs
According to sources, she declined to give out the information for two days but he then insisted that her ATM card needed to be upgraded for depositing her salary and that cards of several other MPs were being upgraded as well.
Later, the MP was told to check her account by her staff after she told them about the upgrade and the fraud came to light. A case under section 420 IPC, 66 and 66 D of IT Act was registered by Patiala police. Sources said the state police on Tuesday sent a team of Patiala police. The accused was arrested by Jamtara police on August 3.
- The Indian Express website has been rated GREEN for its credibility and trustworthiness by Newsguard, a global service that rates news sources for their journalistic standards.
