Pune: The Pune city police have arrested a 37-year-old woman from Mumbai believed to have been involved in direct interaction with the actual racketeers in the case of Cosmos Bank online fraud last year. 
This is the 13th arrest in the case made by the Special Investigating Team of Pune police.

Identified as Nikhatjahan Ansari, a resident of Byculla, she was arrested on Wednesday evening and produced before the court in Pune on Thursday. While all 12 who have been arrested earlier were the ‘money mules’ who only withdrew the cash using the fake (cloned) ATM cards, Ansari was directly associated with the individuals, now believed to be in Dubai, who were suspected to have been involved in cloning the cards and running the entire operation.

According to the information that has already been released by the police earlier, four wanted suspects Kunal Shukla, Abdul Bhai and Sumer Shaikh are believed to be in Dubai. Nikhatjahan, the wife of the fourth wanted suspect is identified as Nasir Usmangani Ansari.

In the remand application, the police have stated that they are now going to probe how stolen data was given by Sumer Shaikh to arrested suspect (Nikhatjahan). The police are also trying to seize the device used by these suspects to clone cards and nab the wanted suspect Nasir with the help of his wife.

About the case

• In one of the biggest malware attack on Cosmos Banks Debit Card Payment System on August 11, 2018, approximately Rs 78 crore were withdrawn through various ATMs located in 28 countries via 12,000 Visa card transactions.
• Approximately Rs 2.50 crore was withdrawn through 2,800 debit card transactions in India at various locations. 
• Further, on August 13, Rs 13.5 crore was transferred to a Hong Kong-based entity using the SWIFT facility.