Kanitkar had lodged a complaint with the Chatuhshrungi police station in this case. Senior police inspector Sheshrao Suryanwashi said that the accused Mishra was working part time with the call centre of ICICI bank in Mumbai.

“Mishra got Kanitkar’s personal information and debit card details. He shared it the two accomplices. They further passed on the information to the fraudsters Srinivas and Bhanushali,” Suryanwashi said.

“One of the fraudsters then called the customer care centre of ICICI in the guise of Kanitkar. The fraudsters were had accurate details of Kanitkar like his date of birth, mother’s name and address. On submitting this information at the customer care centre, the fraudster managed to clear the customer verification process and placed a request for a new debit card, saying that the old debit card has been misplaced,” Suryanwashi added.

Posing as Kanitkar, the fraudster also requested the customer care executive to change the mobile number. The fraudster submitted another mobile number for receiving the SMS alerts from the bank that were meant from Kanitkar. Accordingly, the fraudster received an SMS from the bank saying the new debit card has been dispatched through a private courier service and would reach the residential address.

But, before the card was delivered, Srinivasan went to the courier service centre and collected the debit card by hand, for which he produced a fake driving licence as identity proof, carrying Kanitkar’s name and address.

The fraudsters then used the debit card for withdrawing cash and shopping at various places in Mumbai and Pune between January 8 and 12. Meanwhile, Kanitkar found that ICICI ATM machines were not accepting the debit card he was possessing. To verify the matter, when he approached the bank, he came to know that a new debit card was issued in his name and an amount of Rs 7.17 lakh was debited without his knowledge.

During investigations, police found that fraudsters had submitted their “Orkut” female friend’s mobile number at the customer care centre. A police team nabbed her at a hotel in Lonavla. Following the leads from her interrogations, police arrested the fraudsters. An ICICI bank debit card, HSBC bank master card, six SIM cards, mobile handsets, a laptop, pen drive, two USB modems, nine CDs of various softwares and a cash of Rs 10,400 was recovered from their possession.