Gang that ‘ran cyber slavery call centres in Southeast Asia planned similar operation in India’, 3 held: Goa Police

According to police, 549 Indian citizens, who had been forced to work in cyber scam call centres on the Myanmar-Thailand border, were repatriated by the Indian government last year. One of the victims, who was from Goa, had been lured by the accused on the pretext of a job as a call centre executive in Thailand for a monthly remuneration of Rs 60,000, police said.

A police investigation found that the victim from Goa had been trafficked to Cambodia and forced to commit financial fraud by luring potential victims in the US to invest in fake trading companies.

Police identified the three accused as Adithya Ravichandran (22), a college student from Tamil Nadu; Rupnarayan Gupta (36), a resident of Mumbai; and Talaniti Nulaxi (22), a native of Kazakhstan. Police said identity cards of three nationalities – UAE, China and Kazakhstan – were recovered from Talaniti’s possession.

Police alleged that Ravichandran was involved in conducting interviews of candidates for what they were led to believe were jobs in Thailand. The accused were given details of candidates through “people higher up the chain”. Ravichandran worked for another accused, Rupnarayan Gupta, who allegedly ran a recruitment agency in Mulund West, Mumbai.

“The said agency is not registered with the Ministry of External Affairs to send Indians abroad. Rupnarayan received data of candidates from his agents, which were then forwarded for appearing for job interviews. The gang used to set up interviews of victims on a Zoom call with someone from Thailand or the Philippines to test their soft skills. He got tickets booked for the victims and sent them to Thailand. The third accused, Talaniti, was also involved in hiring of the victims for committing financial frauds using social media platforms,” said Rahul Gupta, SP crime and cyber crime, Goa.

The probe found that the Kazakh national had come to India to set up similar call centres, the SP said.

“The probe has found that they were planning to rent an eight- or 10-storey building, which could accommodate over a thousand people, to run similar call centres in Delhi-NCR or Bengaluru or Hyderabad, and also in Japan and South Korea,” he said.

Police said the gang was “found to have an international presence with agents in other countries”.

“The gang was hiring people for this purpose through Telegram. They were also engaged in renting bank accounts and SIM cards from India,” said SP Gupta.

Police said Ravichandran was arrested on March 23 from Bengaluru, Talaniti was arrested from Delhi airport on March 26, while Rupnarayan Gupta was arrested on Thursday from Mumbai by several teams of cyber crime unit.