A special squad of the Kozhikode cyber police has moved the Kozhikode Chief Judicial Magistrate Court seeking production warrant under Section 267 of the Code of Criminal Procedure to interrogate Kaushal Shah, the prime accused in a recent deep fake tech scam who is currently in Tihar Jail.
Police sources said the Ahmadabad native was suspected of having direct involvement in a series of similar tech crimes, apart from building a nation-wide network of fraudsters specialised in financial crimes. “We came to know very recently that he was remanded in judicial custody last month following his arrest in connection with another cybercrime registered in New Delhi,” they said.
The special squad tracked the whereabouts of Shah following the arrest of his three close aides from various States. Gujarat native Shaik Murthu Samiyahayath was the first to be nabbed in connection with the incident from his village. The other two — Sidhesh Anand Karve and Amrish Ashok Patil — are Maharashtra natives who were arrested from Goa.
Apart from the arrests, the police had managed to recover over 30 SIM cards and several mobile phones from the three who had created numerous fake social media accounts to operate financial fraud. Police sources said the interrogation of Kaushal Shah would be crucial as he coordinated the criminal network in the field.
It was in July 2023 that the Artificial Intelligence-based fraud stealing ₹40,000 from the bank account of a Kozhikode native was reported to the police for action. The complainant was a retired employee of Coal India Limited. According to him, the caller pretended to be one of his close friends in Andhra Pradesh in a fake video call. The fraudsters also employed AI tools to operate the trickery and get the amount transferred into their account through Google Pay.
The cyber squad cracked the case after a four-month long investigation with the support of the high-tech crime inquiry cell. It was claimed to be the first such AI-employed banking fraud operated in Kerala. The probe was taken up by the Kozhikode cyber police station on the instructions of the State Police Chief.
According to police sources, a WhatsApp number reportedly used by one of the scammers was the main thread to proceed with the probe. The case was a challenging one as most of the bank accounts opened by the fraudsters were in the names of unknown persons using forged identity documents. The mobile phone numbers traced during the course of the investigation were also in the names of others who were totally ignorant of such connections in their names.
