BENGALURU: Miscreants siphoned off Rs 45.7 lakh from an engineering company’s bank accounts by deactivating its proprietor’s mobile number and hacking its internet banking credentials.

Company chief TV Jagadeesh and wife Mangala were made to shuttle between two police stations before Vijayanagar police registered their complaint on Wednesday after more than a 24-hour delay.

Between Saturday evening when Jagadeesh found his Airtel sim wasn’t working and Tuesday when Mangala registered a complaint, a sum of Rs 45.7 lakh had been transferred out of their overdraft and current accounts from Canara Bank in five tranches in 30 minutes on Monday morning.

Jagadeesh runs Creative Engineers, which manufactures mineral-processing and slurry-pumping machinery, at Hegganahalli. The couple lives in Vijayanagar.

No lapse on our part, says Airtel

Police suspect the fraudsters may have deactivated Jagadeesh’s sim card after hacking his email account to generate a replacement request and obtained the replacement sim, besides hacking the firm’s internet banking credentials.

According to Mangala, it all started around 6pm on Saturday when Jagadeesh found his Airtel sim was not working. Shivamogga-bound Jagadeesh tried calling the service provider’s customer care from another phone, but couldn’t get through. On Sunday morning, he contacted the customer care via phone and reported about his nonfunctional sim card. The executive asked him to get a new sim for the same number. As it was a corporate sim card, he needed to issue an official letter.

On Monday morning, he sent an email to Airtel and his staff picked up his new sim. As it didn’t work after six hours, Jagadish contacted the customer care and sent his office staff to get another one, which got activated. On Tuesday, Mangala tried to access their firm’s bank account online and found that the username and the password were wrong. She informed Jagadeesh, who was travelling. She assumed he may have changed the credentials, but learnt that wasn’t the case.

Jagadeesh asked her to go to the Vijayanagar branch of Canara Bank. There, she was told Rs 45 lakh had been transferred out in 30 minutes on Monday. While Rs 10 lakh, Rs 14 lakh, Rs 15 lakh and Rs 4 lakh were transferred from the firm’s overdraft account between 9am and 9.30am, a sum of Rs 2.7 lakh was debited from its current account. Police said the money was transferred to accounts in Kolkata and Gujarat.

Jagadeesh said the accounts were left with Rs 13,000 and Rs 5,000, adding the money siphoned off was a loan for his business. Only Jagadeesh, his wife and the firm accountant know the username and password, but the transacting authority lies with only him and Mangala. “It’s shocking how Airtel issued a corporate sim card without papers. It was issued without my knowledge and consent,” he said.

An Airtel spokesperson said the sim was issued after they got an email from Jagadeesh on Saturday, and didn’t illegally provide one without his consent. “There was no lapse on our part,” the spokesperson said. Police have registered a case under IPC section 420 (cheating) and IT Act 66D (punishment for cheating by personation by using computer resource) and are probing whether Jagadish’s email account was hacked or there was any insider role.