Hyderabad: CCTVs helped the police to nab a 25-year-old farmer turned conman on Thursday, who was involved in attention diversion offences in ATM booths.
Siddesh, hailing from Kurnool, robbed people by offering to help them withdraw and deposit cash in ATMs and replaced their original debit cards with fake cards. Police also recovered Rs 77,000 cash from him. Police said his main targets were illiterate persons and senior citizens.
West Zone DCP A. Venkateswar Rao said Siddesh was an Intermediate dropout and as he could not find employment he turned to agriculture. Earlier, he was arrested in three different cases at Kurnool for involvement in attention diversion offences. After coming out on bail he came to Hyderabad in January 2016 and was staying at his friend’s room in Erragadda.
On March 17, B. Suryanarayana, a daily labourer, came to the SBI ATM at Balkampet to deposit Rs 50,000 in his friend’s account. When he was unable to operate the machine, Siddesh who was waiting there, offered to help him. He said that cash cannot be deposited in the machine and he will transfer it from his account using his debit card.
Due to lack of funds in the account two attempts to transfer Rs 40,000 and Rs 10,000 failed and he got receipts for the same. But he made the victim believe that the amount had been transferred by showing him the receipts. “Later, he took Rs 50,000 from him and fled. The victim noticed that the amount was not transferred to his friend’s account,” Rao said, adding that he spent the money on luxuries.
Police recovered CCTV footage from the ATM booth and nabbed Siddesh on Thursday. He admitted that he had committed similar offences in Kurnool in March 2015. In Hyderabad also, he committed two offences before this by cheating elderly people and stole their debit cards by replacing it with fake cards from the collection of cards he carried.
