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HYDERABAD: Taking advantage of people’s preference to book services through seamless methods, conmen—on the pretext of representing a gas agency—stole people’s identification proofs and their bank details.

In the last 15 days, two cases have been registered by Rachakonda police where victims were duped by fraudsters pretending to offer new gas connections.

The callers are targeting to those who are in need of new gas connection. By promising to facilitate the connection in the shortest possible time, the callers asked the victims to share information such as their Aadhaar and PAN numbers, after which they asked the victim for their bank details saying that the details are needed to link their gas account to bank account to remit subsidies in the future. The linking of the bank account to the gas connection has been mandatory for the past few years to avail the remittance of subsidy.

The accused changed the registered phone numbers in the victim’s account and siphoned off money from the account.

In one of the two complaints received by the officials, a victim lost Rs 1 lakh, which was withdrawn in two instalments, while in other case only documents of ID proofs were collected. The accused later became inaccessible.

“We are bothered about how the victims’ credentials, especially Aadhaar, can be misused by the unknown accused. Two cases were registered and investigation is under way,” sources in Rachkonda police said.

