Undertrial Turkish ATM hacker flees from custody in filmy style, alert issued

Agartala:Tripura police raised alarm for it’s Assam and West Bengal counterparts following escape of an under-trail Turkish ATM fraudster from the hospital of Agartala Govt Medical College yesterday.

Taking the advantage of security lapses during health check-up in the hospital, the under-trail Hakan Zamburakan (54) escaped through a window of the toilet in the hospital. The security personnel deployed for him noticed his absence inside the clinic about half an hour later. Due to Covid situation doctors have been allowing only the patients inside and accordingly Hakan went alone and policemen accompanying him were waiting outside.

“After consulting the doctor he reportedly came out through another door, proceeded to the toilet and the health workers did not think he would be escaping from a small window. When they noticed the toilet door was not opening for a long time, they informed the police waiting outside and found he fled away,” police said.

Besides informing all the police stations and alerting the border security force (BSF) to evade him from crossing the Indo-Bangladesh border, Tripura police have also informed Assam and West Bengal police to keep a watch on Hakan Zamburakan. A massive search was conducted in the adjacent areas soon after the incident was reported but there was no trace of him.

Zamburakan was one of the four foreign nationals – two belonging to Turkey and two from Bangladesh were arrested in November 2019 in Belgharia of central Kolkata in connection with hacking of a few hundred Indian bank accounts including cloning of ATM cards of about 60 SBI customers of Tripura.

With the report of large scale hacking of bank accounts in Tripura, look out notice against Zamburakan was issued by crime branch of Assam police; a team of cyber cell of Calcutta police has detained four infamous hackers responsible for looting money from ATM accounts of private individuals from six cities including Agartala across the country.

According to report, the hackers had pulled out a few crore of rupees from more than 1788 bank accounts from different cities of India. And about Rs 1.19 Cr was looted out from account holders of Tripura in two days compromising the security of different banks. They were brought to Agartala in connection with the cases and put behind bars.

Zamburakan was accompanied by his Turkish friend Fettah Aldemir and two Bangladeshi associates - Mohammed Hannan and Mohammed Rafiqul Islam who had confessed their involvement in cloning of ATM cards and hacking accounts to loot money in cities like Mumbai, Delhi, Deheradun, Calcutta, Guwahati and Agartala.(UNI)