Hyderabad: The city police is helpless in the case of Pakistani nationals, who duped several people in Hyderabad and other major cities in the country, in the Pakistani lottery scam, as it is almost impossible to arrest them.
Senior officials say that they will try to get a Red Corner Notice issued against the two suspects, Harul and Ali Bhai, who are said to be operating from Saudi Arabia to bring them to the city. The existing case involves crores of rupees and hundreds of victims. However, investigation officials have got no vital clues to track them down. The messy knots in the Indo - Saudi extradition policy might also hinder the process.
Officials of the CCS cyber crime police station have found that the two suspects are part of an enormous hawala nexus spread across Saudi Arabia, India and Pakistan, and that they have been using several Indian citizens as their operatives.
The city police had arrested seven people in connection with the lottery scam, which involved transactions of lakhs of rupees in more than 70 bank accounts in Hyderabad, Ranga Reddy, and two other districts of Andhra Pradesh. However, all of the arrested suspects were mere account holders and agents working for the two Pak nationals for 10 per cent commission.
CCS DCP Pala Raju said, “There is also a middleman between the Pakistani crooks and the Hyderabadi agents. He has been hiding for a long time now.”
Investigation officials are not even sure if they have got the names of the Pak nationals right. “We gathered information about them from the arrested people. They are told by the middleman that the names of their bosses were Harul and Ali Bhai, but we could not confirm it so far,” said an official.
Since the police officials found that the money collected through the lottery fraud was being handled by the hawala network, they believe that more clues on the two suspect can lead to a major hawala network in the national capital and other cities.
