Mumbai: Two college students from Delhi arrested in loan app scam

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In a significant breakthrough, the Bangur Nagar police arrested two college students from Delhi who were involved in a loan app scam. The accused had been providing bank accounts for the scamsters and were also found to have created obscene images of the woman and her sister, which they deployed to extort money by threatening to make the images viral.

The woman reported that the gang had morphed obscene images of her and her sister. They were constantly calling her using the internet calling VPIN IDs and making extortion demands. The police traced the suspects by following the trail of the fund transferred from the woman's account.

The arrested suspects were identified as Mohit Deepak Jain, 20 and Lovneet Nareshkumar alias Nikhil, 20. "The 27-year-old woman resides with her lawyer husband and children under the jurisdiction of Bangur Nagar police station," said an officer from Bangur Nagar police station. She took a loan from the ‘Handicash' loan app for R37,600 but received only Rs 21,960 after deduction of charges. A couple of weeks later, she started receiving abusive calls and messages from various callers from Pakistan and other foreign countries in January.

"The situation escalated when recovery agents began spreading morphed images of her and her sister with pornographic images, to their contacts. One of the suspects also morphed a family photo of the woman and posted it on his WhatsApp status, labeling the family as loan defaulters," said a police officer.

When the victim approached Bangur Nagar police station, assistant police inspector (API) Vivek Tambe and Rahul Bhadrage started the investigation under the guidance of DCP Anand Bhoite and the supervision of senior police inspector Pramod Tawde.

The police checked the UPI reference number on which the woman transferred the amount and found that the Jio account belonged to Mohit Jain, but the mobile number linked to it was of Lovneet. Further investigation revealed that the two of them provided mule services on commission basis for loan app fraudsters. They provided the scamsters with bank accounts and passed details to the gang on Telegram, said an officer from Bangur Nagar police station.

Additional section 384 was included in the FIR along with sections 354(a), 354(d), and 507 of IPC and various sections of the IT Act. The duo were arrested in Delhi and brought to Mumbai on transit remand, they were produced before the Metropolitan Magistrate court at Borivli and are remanded to police custody, the officer said.