A 33-year-old dismissed BSF constable was arrested for allegedly siphoning off around Rs 70 lakh from permanent retirement accounts of a number of personnel of the paramilitary force, police said on Tuesday.
The accused Ghanshyam Yadav is a resident of Uttar Pradesh’s Ghazipur district and was posted with the Border Security Force (BSF) in West Bengal’s Malda. He was dismissed from service for being absent without permission in 2019, they said.
In a complaint, the National Pension System (NPS) section of the BSF’s pay and accounts division said around Rs 70 lakh had been siphoned off from the permanent retirement accounts of 69 personnel through 89 fraudulent transactions, a senior police official said.
This was done through the online facility of partial withdrawal of accumulated funds by self-declaration or authentication under the NPS during the Covid period, the official said.
Yadav was apprehended from Uttar Pradesh’s Prayagraj, where he was living under a false identity, Delhi Deputy Commissioner of Police (Cyber) Prashant Gautam said.
While in Prayagraj, he posed as a constable of the Uttar Pradesh Police, and also wore the uniform of one, the official said and added that he had a UP police sticker on his car.
Police said a special online one-time password (OTP) based mechanism was allowed to be used for partial withdrawal — 25 per cent — of self-contribution of accumulated funds in permanent retirement accounts under the NPS through self-declaration and authentication during Covid considering the hardship being faced in offline requests.
The OTP were sent to a subscriber’s mobile number and email associated with his permanent retirement account number (PRAN) to ensure genuine withdrawal during the Covid period to avoid physical verification through the drawing and disbursal officer (DDO) of a unit, they said.
Yadav was posted as a constable with the BSF’s 122nd Battalion in Malada in West Bengal in May 2019 and he was dismissed from services for being absent without permission, police said.
During his posting, he got the login details of the battalion’s DDO during a visit to the accounts branch of the unit, they said.
He accessed the NPS portal with the stolen details of the DDO and learned about all the features and functions of the portal, police said.
Yadav detected a vulnerability in the NPS online system and got access to the DDO’s account by changing security questions. He used this to get unauthorised access to accounts of five more DDO’s, they said.
Subsequently, the dismissed BSF constable got access to PRANs of all personnel of the battalion. The accused targeted those personnel whose email ids and mobilephone numbers were not linked with their PRAN, police said.
He filled in his mobilephone number, email ID and bank account number in the targeted PRANs, they said.
Thereafter, Yadav initiated the process of online partial withdrawal through mobilephone OTP and email id verification, police said.
With the stolen money, Yadav purchased a car in the name of his girlfriend with whom he was living in Prayagraj, they said and added that he was a father of three and had family back home.
He also used details of his girlfriend and her late father-in-law for committing the crime, police said.
Three bank accounts were freezed during investigation of the case, they said.
Yadav was wanted in another case in Delhi and related to preparing a forged appointment letter for constable in the BSF against which he received a huge amount of money, police said.
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