Mumbai Cyber Police Arrest Two More Men in ₹10.4-Crore INOX Cheating Case
The South Cyber police in Mumbai have arrested two more men in connection with the ₹10.4-crore INOX Group cheating case, taking the total number of arrests in the investigation to ten. The two accused allegedly supplied mobile SIM cards used by cyber fraudsters to execute corporate impersonation scams, commonly known as "Boss Scams".
The arrested individuals were identified as Amir Chand Mohammad Khan, 22, a resident of Siwan in Bihar, and Suraj Kumar Pradeep Kumar Saw, also known as Vishal, 22, a resident of Dhanbad in Jharkhand. Deputy Commissioner of Police (Cyber) Bajrang Bansode stated that investigators seized 161 SIM cards from their possession.
According to the police, the fraudsters targeted Girish Amin, deputy general manager of accounts at the INOX Group. On June 3, a scammer used one of the fraudulently obtained SIM cards to message Amin on WhatsApp while posing as a senior director of the group. The profile displayed the director's name and picture. The fraudster initially claimed to be in an important meeting, promised to call later, and instructed Amin to make an urgent transfer of ₹46.5 lakh.
Between June 3 and June 15, Amin acted on repeated WhatsApp instructions from the impersonator and transferred funds from company accounts into multiple mule bank accounts. In total, 63 transactions were executed, amounting to ₹10,40,71,924. The fraud was uncovered when Amin contacted the actual INOX Group director to request invoices for the transferred funds, only to learn that no such payment directives had been issued.
Investigators traced the SIM card used in the crime back to a mobile shop run by Khan in Siwan. Police said an Indian Army jawan posted in Tamil Nadu had approached Khan's shop while visiting his native place in Siwan to port his mobile number. Khan collected the soldier's details, issued a fresh SIM card, and falsely told the soldier that the porting process had failed. Khan then sold the active SIM card to Saw, who subsequently passed it to the cyber gang.
Senior Police Inspector Nandkumar Gopale of the South Cyber police station stated that Khan was arrested after police contacted the army jawan and confirmed the sequence of events. Police revealed that Khan had also supplied SIM cards used in a separate February fraud targeting Mega Pipes, where an accountant transferred ₹48 lakh following similar fake directives. Police had previously arrested eight individuals in the INOX case and frozen approximately ₹6 crore across various bank accounts.
