16-year-old mastermind behind mParivahan cyber fraud; websites of Motor Vehicle Department in six states hacked

KOCHI: The M-Parivahan cyber fraud gang hacked the websites of the Motor Vehicle Department in six states, including Kerala, and leaked information. They committed the fraud by sending WhatsApp messages to the numbers they had obtained. The other states are Tamil Nadu, Karnataka, Andhra Pradesh, Gujarat, and West Bengal. The accused revealed this during interrogation by the Kochi City Cyber Police. The 16-year-old is the mastermind. The police arrested the nationwide fraud gang after camping undercover in North India for 10 days.

The arrested Atulkumar Singh (32) and Manish Yadav (24), natives of Varanasi, Uttar Pradesh, will be brought to Kochi by Wednesday afternoon. The 16-year-old was released with his relatives after issuing a notice and collecting information. The notice asks him to reach Kochi. His phone has been taken into custody. It has been informed that he is doing a course on cybersecurity. All the accused are members of wealthy families in Varanasi.

The father of the second accused, Manish Yadav, is a police officer. Due to this, Kerala Cyber Police did not even get local police support. The intervention of Kochi City Police Commissioner Putta Vimaladitya and DCP Aswathy Jiji was required.

A special team comprising Kochi City Cyber SHO Shamir Khan, police officers Arun, Ajithraj, Nikhil George, Alfit Andrews and Sharafuddin left for Uttar Pradesh on July 10. The trip was based on some information received during a two-month investigation.

The accused were found, but the challenge was to catch them. The team split into two as civilians. Atul and Manish were arrested from their homes. Even though women came to the scene, they somehow managed to escape with the accused. The accused had swindled around Rs 45 lakh from Kerala, defrauding more than 500 people. 2,700 people were scammed across the country. All this money was converted into Bitcoin.