Accused Kumar Gaurav at Kotwali police station in Patna on Thursday. Picture by Ranjeet Kumar Dey

Police claimed their first success on Thursday in a cyber crime case lodged last year by a resident who had been duped of money through a fake website in the name of Patna High Court.

Kumar Gaurav, a resident of Magistrate Colony, has been arrested for creating the fake website — www.highcourtpatna.co.in (it has been removed).

Gaurav is engaged in the business of setting up mobile towers in the state capital, the police said.

The fake website had a link to a webpage which invited applications for recruitment in Group D posts.

The original website address of the high court is www.patnahighcourt.bih. nic.in.

The complaint was lodged on July 25 last year by one Praveen Singh, a resident of Saidpur Road in the Bikhna Pahari area, who was duped of Rs 7,000 on the promise of a job in the court.

“Altogether four people were involved in this racket, including Gaurav. A hunt has been launched for the other three — Kunal Kumar, Shivam and Ram Kumar. Preliminary investigations have revealed that the three men had duped some other people as well by promising them government jobs. They roped in Gaurav to create the fake website in order to authenticate their so-called promise,” deputy superintendent of police (law and order) Lalit Sharma said.

The officer said the police first got in touch with the service provider of the fake website.

“We came to know that ‘net4india’, a domain name, was the service provider for the website. We contacted their representatives and they gave us an email id (gauravji@gmail.com) and the Internet Protocol (IP) address. Through the IP address we came to know that the website was created from a cyber café on West Boring Road. We contacted them but they didn’t have any record of the customers,” Sharma said.

The police then tracked the mode of payment for the creation of the website. “We came to know that the money had been transferred through online banking. The police got a reference number of Punjab National Bank. The head office of the bank provided us the account number of Kumar Gaurav. A sum of Rs 2,000 had been paid to him for creating the website,” Sharma added.

During questioning, Gaurav disclosed the name of three of his accomplices. “The police are at present searching for them,” the officer said.

The fake website had a webpage — “Employment notice number 07/2009”. The page displayed a list of 175 people, who, it claimed, were already recruited.

“Most of the names are fake as Gaurav claims that his friends took money from only a few people,” Sharma said.