Crime Branch arrest Howrah man for running fake government of India website

The Crime Branch has arrested a man on charges of hosting fake government of India websites and duping several people. Police said Sudipta Chatterjee (43) hosted a fake website under the name of ‘Pradhan Mantri Adarsh Yojna’. The website was being hosted from Howrah, West Bengal. Chatterjee mostly targeted people from the Hindi belt, the northeast and south India.

Crime Branch officers found the website suspicious when they came across it. They traced the URL http://www.pmay-gov.in — to its server, which they found was operating from the US, an anomaly because a government of India website operates from India alone. Police then registered an FIR suo motu.

Investigations led the police to Howrah, where Delhi Police along with local police conducted raids and arrested Chatterjee. Police recovered 20 mobile phones, hard disks, internet dongles, cheques related to 43 accounts, fake project reports and 16 rubber stamps of government offices along with other incriminating evidence from his house.

“To confuse users, the URL had the reflection of a government website and it was listed on priority with Google. Whenever any online surfer would search for project support by the government of India, the website would figure in the top hits. If any surfer would browse the contents of the website, then there were sufficient reasons to believe that it was a government website aimed at helping prospective youth by providing project loans and promoting entrepreneurship in India. The prospective clients would fill the necessary details online,” Joint Commissioner of Police (Crime) Ravindra Yadav said.

“Chatterjee had employed about 17 tele-callers to contact prospective clients and to give them the registration number of their application forms. These tele-callers, though many of them might not be in the know of the racket, were specially trained by the mastermind and scripts were provided to them so that the prospective client had no idea he was being cheated. 

There would be a few clauses about the banking transactions in which the client would be persuaded to maintain a specified amount in his account as security. The mastermind would also obtain the signed cheques, ATM cards, PIN number of the accounts and would direct the client that he should not avail any telebanking or net banking facility on that account. Once these steps would be complied with, then Chatterjee would withdraw the security amount from the client’s account,” Yadav said.

Police said Chatterjee had an associate, who is a web designer. Both created other domains like bharat-sarkar.in, govindia.in, CGTMSE-govt.in and CGTMSE-gov.in apart from e-mails like goi@developmentofindia.in and project@developmentofindia.in.

Police have blocked 43 bank accounts and are still trying to identify how many people were duped. Further interrogation and investigation is underway.