The driver of a Delhi Government school’s vice-principal duped him of over Rs 4 lakh after taking the victim’s mobile phone on some pretext. Police said the accused has been arrested and identified as Sandesh Chaudhary aka Sunny Chaudhary (23), a resident of Lal Kuan, Ghaziabad.

The official said that the accused after doing fraudulent transactions from his employer’s mobile phone used to delete messages so to not get caught. The matter came to light after, the complainant, Mahesh Kumar Sharma (55), a resident of Babarpur, presently appointed as Vice Principal of a government school, Mandawali reported at Cyber northeast district police station that he received an SMS on his mobile phone regarding debit of Rs 33068 from his savings bank account with Punjab National Bank, Kamla Nagar, Delhi.

On suspicion, he obtained statement of his bank account from which it emerged that, since March to June 2023, 18 such transactions amounting to Rs 4,44,630 have been fraudulently made by some unknown person. “During detailed examination of the complainant, it emerged that the complainant often sought help of his driver namely, Sandesh for online transactions and other networking related jobs, but due to his suspected activities, he was terminated from the job in the end of June,” said Deputy Commissioner of Police (northeast), Joy Tirkey.

During investigation, information was obtained from Punjab National Bank, Kamla Nagar and Flipkart from which it came out that the fraudster had used that amount for purchasing of various items including 14 mobile phones, one LED TV, one refrigerator, one washing machine, bluetooth speakers & one wooden TV unit from Flipkart.

“Further, technical surveillance was mounted and on the basis of information collected, a raid was conducted at the possible hideout and team was successful in nabbing Sandesh,” said the DCP.  During interrogation, Sandesh revealed that he clandestinely obtained the ATM number of the complainant.

For online payment, OTP is essentially required. For obtaining OTP, he used to take mobile phone of his employer on some pretext and after successful payment of the ordered items from Flipkart, he deleted all the SMSs related to transactions,” said the DCP.

“In this way, the accused made 18 such transactions of total amount for Rs 4,44,630 for shopping on Flipkart. He further disclosed that in order to avoid detection by the delivery agents, he used to give the vague address of his nearby locality and took delivery near some famous landmark near his rented house,” said the DCP.