Chandigarh: In a massive operation against cybercriminals involved in financial crimes, Haryana Police carried out multiple raids at cybercrime hot-spot areas in the Nuh district. 102 teams comprising more than 5000 police personnel raided 14 villages in the district together late last night and apprehended 

During these raids, the police teams seized a huge amount of digital gadgets including ATM cards, smartphones, laptops, Aadhaar cards and ATM swipe machines along with other items. These suspects are being interrogated for further leads.

Giving information here today, a Haryana Police spokesperson informed that after getting intelligence and other inputs related to cyber fraud in different areas of Nuh district, police prepared a strategy to check cybercrime. On the basis of these inputs, police, after identifying the hot-spot of cybercrime, closely monitored the locations and conducted raids simultaneously with a massive police force. 

For this purpose, Haryana Police formed separate teams of more than 5000 policemen, in which 01 SP, 6 Additional SPs, 14 DSPs and other policemen launched a massive crackdown against cyber offenders.

The crackdown on cyber thugs was carried out by 102 police raiding parties. Different teams of police simultaneously raided 14 identified villages of Punhana, Pinangwa, Ferozepur Jhirka and Bichhore areas. 

The drive started at 11.30 pm last night, under which the action went on till late night. The total duration of this operation was 24 hours from the briefing of the police force to the search operation on various targets.

Following the directives of DGP Haryana PK Agrawal, DIG STF Simardeep Singh and SP Nuh Sh. Varun Singla performed a major role in making this entire operation successful.

SP Nuh Varun Singla informed that after the cyber training program conducted in Bhondsi from April 4 to April 8, the outline of this special operation to crackdown on cyber thugs in Nuh was prepared after getting intelligence and other inputs. The police first fixed the targets by mapping 14 villages considered to be hotspots of cybercrime in the district. 

Villages namely Khedla, Luhinga Khurd, Luhinga Kalan, Gokalpur, Godhola, Aminabad, Mahu, Gulalta, Jaimat, Jakhopur, Nai, Tirwara, Mamlika and Papda were identified as cybercrime hotspots and raids were carried out. Since April 8, 20 criminals involved in cyber fraud cases have already been arrested by the police in district Nuh.

The highest number of 31 cyber criminals have been nabbed from Nai village, followed by 25 from Luhinga Kalan village, 20 each from Jaimat and Jakhopur, 17 each from Khedla and Tirwara, and 11 from Aminabad. The police have also recovered a huge amount of mobile phones, ATMs and other equipment from these cyber thugs. Police has also nabbed one criminal carrying a reward of Rs 10,000.

A total of 66 smartphones, 65 fake SIMs, 166 Aadhaar cards, 3 laptops, 128 ATM cards of different banks, 2 ATM swipe machines, 01 AEPS machine, 6 scanners, 5 PAN cards etc. were recovered from the arrested criminals and hackers. In addition, 7 country-made pistols, 2 cartridges, 2 cars, 4 tractor-trolleys, 22 motorcycles have also been recovered. The raids were conducted by the police targeting 69 accused involved in cyber crimes.

In the initial investigation, the connection of the apprehended accused with cyber criminals of other states has also come to the fore, and further investigation in this regard is underway.

It is worthwhile to mention here that apart from taking stern action to prevent cybercrime, police is also working to make people aware of cybercrime.