A 23-year-old civil engineer was arrested for stealing SIM cards from passengers' cellphones kept for charging in waiting rooms of Pune railway station, the government railway police (GRP), Pune, said on Friday.
The suspect is identified as Sanket Kulkarni, currently residing in Akurdi and originally from Dharashiv district. He is lodged in the Yerawada Central Prison.
Additional superintendent of police (GRP, Pune) Vishal Gaikwad told TOI that on Jan 23, a passenger from Sangli had put his cellphone on charge in a waiting room at the railway station. After some time, he found that the SIM card was missing from his phone. When he installed a new SIM card, he came to know that someone had procured an online loan of Rs 1.13 lakh using his bank details and purchased a cellphone from an e-commerce website.
The GRP had registered a case. However, the police could not trace the accused. “There was no CCTV footage. The suspect, moreover, frequently changed the SIM cards,” Gaikwad said.
The suspect, the police said, used the stolen SIM cards to access bank accounts linked to those numbers and transfer money. The police, however, received another case when a SIM card was stolen from a different waiting room on May 29. “In this case, too, money was transferred from the victim’s bank account,” he said. “Our team examined CCTV footage, and after detailed scrutiny of the footage and a tip-off, the team nabbed the suspect on June 9,” the officer said.
During interrogation, Kulkarni admitted to having stolen three SIM cards and transferring money from the linked bank accounts. Gaikwad said Kulkarni is currently jobless. He needed money to fund his online gaming addiction. After stealing a SIM, Kulkarni would insert it into his own phone and activate the victim’s email account and access their bank details.
The police said the suspect would then also procure Aadhaar details or photographs of the person’s debit card, if any, from the backups on the SIM. “Using these details, the suspect would change the PIN of the person’s payment gateways and then either obtain personal loans or withdraw money. He would also shop on e-commerce websites,” Gaikwad said.
