Jaipur: A team from the Department of Information Technology in Jaipur is heading to Jhalawar to assist police investigating a large-scale cyber fraud uncovered under Operation Shutter Down.The DoIT team will analyse the recovered data and trace the origin of over 1,000 login IDs and passwords of govt officers found in the possession of the accused, including credentials of officers from Nagaur, Tonk, Barmer, Jhalawar, Bharatpur and Phalodi. Coordination with the state police’s Special Operations Group (SOG) is also under way owing to the seriousness and scale of the offence. “We have informed the DoIT. Their team will assist our cyber cell in examining the server logs and digital trails,” said Jhalawar SP Amit Kumar.Police arrested eight persons from the gang so far, while 30 others were detained earlier this week in related raids. Investigators said several crores were routed to over 4 lakh suspicious bank accounts using stolen credentials of govt officials. The gang’s operations focused on exploiting vulnerabilities in govt welfare schemes such as the PM Kisan Samman Nidhi, Jan Aadhaar and various social security pension schemes.Police said the racket was allegedly led by Mohammad Laik, who manipulated mobile numbers linked to district nodal officer IDs, enabling one-time passwords (OTPs) to be rerouted to agents involved in the fraud. This provided unauthorised access to multiple welfare portals across districts, they said. TNN
