Agartala, Feb 28 (Reporter) Agartala city police on Friday arrested five persons from different locations for their alleged involvement in a well organized gang for making fraudulent transactions to turn black money into white. The arrested persons all from Agartala were identified as Piyush Debnath from Bodhjung Nagar, Narayan Debnath from the Airport area, Sagar Das from Aralia, Riptadeep Biswas from Nutan Palli, and Rohan Rudra Pal from Kunjaban. SDPO Sadar D P Roy said the scam came into light after one of the members of the racket tried to deceive a travel agency of Agartala two days ago. He said a fraudster visited the agency to purchase a ticket to Jammu and Kashmir. The agency owner, Soumitra Kumar Banik, issued a ticket for Rs 10,000, which the fraudster paid online. Shortly after, the fraudster returned to the agency, posing as a customer again, and requested the cancellation of the ticket, asking for a refund of Rs 10,000 into his account. Trusting him, the agency owner refunded the amount. However, a short while later, Tamil Nadu police contacted Soumitra Kumar Banik and informed him that his bank account had been involved in illegal transactions and had been blocked on Wednesday. Banik immediately rushed to East Agartala police station and lodged a complaint based on which police launched an investigation and managed to track down the fraudster who had purchased the ticket. “The fraudster was part of a larger gang operating in Tripura. They would first make an online payment to a person's account and later retrieve the money online, effectively turning black money into white,” Roy said. The interrogation revealed the gang also encouraged people to open ATM card accounts in large numbers and rent out their ATM cards for a monthly fee of Rs 2,000 to Rs 3,000. These rented ATM cards were then used for digital fraud operations. During the raid, the police seized a large number of ATM cards, bank passbooks, and cash from the arrested individuals, he pointed out. Police discovered that each ATM card had seen transactions ranging from Rs 25 lakh to Rs 30 lakh over six months. The racket operated as an extensive network within the state...////...