Pune: The cyber cell of Pimpri Chinchwad police have arrested four suspects, including three from Jharkhand, involved in the debit card cloning scam. The suspects were using skimmers to copy card data of customers visiting hotels in Pimpri-Chinchwad area.

The arrested suspects have been identified as Nikhil Patil (23), a resident of Devas in Madhya Pradesh, Khalid Ansari (27), residing at Dhanori, Saddam Hussein (29) and Furqan Ansari (32) both residing at Pimple Nilakh and all three originally from Jharkhand.

The suspects were arrested by the team of Cyber Cell Senior Police Inspector Sanjay Tungar, Assistant Police Inspector Sagar Panmand, police personnel Atul Lokhande, Bhaskar Bharati, Nitesh Bichewar and others under the guidance of Commissioner of Police Krishna Prakash, Additional Commissioner of Police Ramnath Pokale, Deputy Commissioner of Police (DCP) Sudhir Hiremath and Assistant Commissioner of Police (ACP) Prerana Katte.

Nikhil and Khalid were involved in the case filed at Bhosari police station case, while the other two were involved in Wakad police station case. Police have seized three debit card skimmer, a laptop and pen drive from the possession of the suspects.

Umesh Devidar Anvekar (35), a resident of Shree Nagar in Pimple Gurav, had filed a complaint on January 2 at Bhosari police station stating that during the period of December 4 to 15, 2020, he and his friend had gone to Madhuban Bar and Restaurant in Bhosari area for dinner when the waiter took their debit card and cloned it.

Investigations revealed that Nikhil had cloned the card and transferred the data to Khalid. Khalid's accomplices in Bihar received the data and withdrew Rs 50 thousand from an ATM in Patna.

In the Wakad police station case, Dayanand Prakash Kirolkar (30), a resident of Golden Treasure society in Punawale had on January 7 gone to dinner at Waghjai Restaurant and Bar at Vishal Nagar in Pimple Nilakh area when the waiter at the hotel cloned his debit card and carried out fraudulent transactions.

Investigations revealed that Saddam and Furqan were working as waiters in the hotel and with the help of their accomplices in Jharkhand used the stolen data to withdraw Rs 54 thousand from an ATM in Ranchi.