The accused persons have been identified as Budhha Sarkar (38), Jayant Banerjee (39), Priyanshu Das (25), Rohit Sarkar (34) and Subhjit Raha (34). All are residents of Kolkata in West Bengal.

According to the complaint of one, Purnendu Sekhar Panda, a resident of Basanti Colony in Rourkela, the members of the gang had allegedly defrauded him of over Rs 9 lakh on the pretext of installing Jio tower atop his house.

After Panda realised that he was duped, he lodged a written complaint with Rourkela Cyber Police Station on March 26, 2019. Acting on the plaint, police had initiated a probe into the case. The five accused persons were arrested following raids by Cyber Police from Dum dum area in Kolkata.

According to police, the members of the gang had allegedly defrauded one Panda and took cash of Rs 9.84 lakh in four instalments on the pretext of installation of a mobile tower.

Police have seized seven laptops, 94 SIM cards, one bio-metric machine, 234 bank cheques, 16 hard discs and other materials from them.

In a presser, Rourkela SP, K Shiva Subramani informed that the accused were forwarded to court after interrogations revealed their involvement in a series of such crimes.