October 28, 2025
JAIPUR – The Jhalawar Police have arrested six members of a cyber fraud gang for embezzling funds from various Central and Rajasthan Government welfare schemes.
The accused allegedly created unauthorised user IDs of state and district nodal offices and transferred benefits to fake bank accounts opened in the names of fictitious beneficiaries.
Superintendent of Police (Jhalawar) Amit Kumar said that Mohammad Laik, an operator at the state nodal office of the PM Kisan Samman Nidhi scheme, was a key operative.
Those arrested include Laik (Jaipur), Subhash (Delhi), Rohit Kumar and Sandeep Sharma (Punjab), Mohammed Shahid Khan (Bharatpur), and the main handler Sunant Sharma.
Two others — government employee Ramesh Chand (Phalodi) and Bhagchand (Dausa) — have been taken into custody for interrogation.
According to the police, Laik misused his official access credentials for the PM Kisan Samman Nidhi portal to create duplicate user IDs.
In collusion with other gang members, he used these unauthorised IDs to carry out land seeding procedures and sanction benefits for fake or ineligible beneficiaries.
The fraudulent benefits were transferred to non-operational or fictitious bank accounts opened or hacked by the gang. The exact scale of the fraud is yet to be determined, but over 11,000 fake beneficiary accounts have been traced in Jhalawar district alone.
While Laik managed operations at the nodal office portal, Mohammed Shahid facilitated forged transactions. Rohit Kumar and Sandeep Sharma created fake websites mimicking government portals to mislead people and collect their data. Subhash supplied personal details of undeserving individuals to the group, while Sunant acted as the main handler.
The arrests were made under Operation Shutterdown (Part 2). Earlier, 30 others linked to the same syndicate had been arrested during Part 1 of the operation.
Police suspect the gang’s network extends to several other states and involves fraudulent activities in multiple government schemes beyond PM Kisan Samman Nidhi.
The number of fictitious beneficiaries involved is believed to be significantly high, SP Amit Kumar said, adding that a multi-level investigation is underway.