Bangalore, July 15: Police have linked a BPO fraudster in Bangalore to the Mumbai train blasts, saying money he helped siphon off HSBC accounts may have financed Tuesday’s carnage.

Nadeem Kashmiri, arrested on June 27 for passing on confidential client information to UK contacts, may be a cog in a terror machinery that has broken into financial networks of banks, investigators said.

A gang in the UK had electronically robbed 20 British clients of HSBC of ?2,33,000 (about Rs 2 crore) with the help of data provided by the 24-year-old call centre employee.

“Brain-mapping and polygraph tests on Kashmiri have revealed he was aware of the fraud syndicate before he joined the HSBC call centre,” inspector-general (economic offences) S.K. Mohapatra of Karnataka’s cyber crime cell said.

“It is possible he joined the company with an intention to pass on data to the UK gang. This money could have been used to plan terror attacks like Tuesday’s Mumbai blasts,” the inspector-general added.

Kashmiri was shifted from police to judicial custody on July 7.

“He will be undergoing a narco-analysis test on July 21. Hopefully, that will confirm what he is saying,” Mohapatra said.

The police believe the UK syndicate, apparently led by a man called Hamid, mainly targets banks like HSBC that outsource work to India.

“Once client details like names, account numbers, balance and passwords are leaked, it’s easy for someone sitting in the UK with a wired PC and a landline connection to commit fraud,” an officer said.

Based on Kashmiri’s interrogation, names and phone numbers have been passed on to UK police for verification.

“They haven’t got back to us yet. But we believe Kashmiri is an important catch. He has given us information that can change the dimension of the (blasts) probe,” the officer said.

“If Hamid or any other gang member is caught in the UK, they will not only be questioned by our team, we may even move extradition proceedings.”

Kashmiri, who kept weeping through his interrogation, had initially said Hamid had lured him with the promise of a job in Britain. But the brain-mapping and polygraph tests threw up the terror angle.

Working at HSBC Electronic Data Processing India Pvt. Ltd (HDPI), the bank’s BPO arm in Bangalore, Kashmiri passed on the data between March and May this year.

He was paid Rs 1.5 lakh through Western Union money transfer to a friend’s bank account.

When British clients complained of unauthorised withdrawals from their accounts, HSBC put staff on watch. The bank zeroed in on Kashmiri and lodged a police complaint.

Under Indian laws, fraudsters who pass on client information get away lightly in the absence of stringent provisions dealing specifically with the offence.