(This story originally appeared in on Oct 7, 2016)

Days after news broke about the Thane crime branch busting a multi-crore call centre racket that duped US citizens, it emerged on Thursday that though no person has been accused of masterminding the ambitious fraudulent operations yet, at least two of the six main accused unabashedly declined to take accountability for ‘cheating the rich Americans’.Out of the 70 arrested in Tuesday night’s raids and as part of the subsequent investigations, three are from the same family.Nasreen Bano Iqbal Balesahib, 59; and her sons Nadeem Iqbal Balasaheb, 30, and Shain Iqbal Balasaheb, 25, were arrested on Wednesday evening as they were listed as the owners of MAC Outsourcing Services Private Limited – the company that ran Universal Outsourcing Solutions, which is one of the raided companies. Incidentally, the raided M Bale House belongs to the family.According to a police source, though Nasreen denied any involvement in the racket, she later told the police in her statement that there was nothing wrong in duping the ‘cheating Americans’.“She told us that it was the Americans they were cheating, not the Indians. So, it shouldn’t be such a big crime,” one of the officers from the crime branch told Mirror.However, the trio feigned innocence in front of the court, saying that they had leased out their property and had no idea about the happenings of the call centres.Speaking with Mirror, Nadeem said, “I am a qualified engineer and have been working in Dubai . We don’t know what is going on here.”However, the police said that he had been unable to submit documents as proof of his employment in Dubai.The Balasahebs resided in a posh 3-bhk apartment on the 12th floor of Antariksha Apartments, located near Mira Road police station. Nasreen and her three sons, Mohammad, Nadeem and Shain lived there, while her husband lives abroad. Her eldest son Mohammad is bed-ridden and severely diabetic. Nadeem is an engineer while Shain has finished his MBA.Inspector Ravindra Daundkar said, “She told us that they were doing nothing wrong by cheating Americans who were rich anyway. She obviously knew what was going on.”Meanwhile, out of the arrests made during the raid on Tuesday, police have especially trained their eyes on Haider Ali Mansuri, 25, Arjun Vasudev, 25, and Govind Thakur, 28. According to the police, Mansuri – a Std XII pass-out — had leased out the office space from Nasreen and had allegedly started working there with the other two.“He told us that while working at previous call centres, he perfected his American accent and then started working at Universal Outsourcing Solutions. He has also accepted that he had access to a lot of money since he started working with Universal and had recently taken a trip to Dubai, where he spent lakhs on every luxury imaginable,” Daundkar said. “Instead of feeling guilty, he was proud of the fact that he cheated the Americans who gloat about being the strongest nation in the world,” he added.Thane Commissioner of Police, Parambir Singh, believes that there are multiple such call centres working in the city and the police are currently collating information on them. Police have also found traces of Hawala accounts being maintained by some of the accused in Ahmadabad. “We are looking into the financial aspect of it and soon enough, we shall have quantifiable details about the money that they were making,” an officer said on the condition of anonymity.Meanwhile, all the 70 arrested were sent to judicial custody till October 10.