Ranchi, June 4: Six persons were arrested from Ranchi today for fraudulently withdrawing Rs 2 crore from the land acquisition department's account with the Kanke Road branch of Canara Bank in February.

The accused, identified as Pankaj Tigga of Sukhdeonagar, Ganesh Lohra of Lalpur, Saurabh Kumar of Sadar (all in Ranchi), Manoj Mehta of Koderma, Saket Sinha and Dhiraj Kumar of Jamshedpur, were picked up from a city-based hotel, where they had assembled apparently to plan a similar heist from the bank account of a private hospital in Ranchi.

Several mobile phones were recovered from their possessions.

Briefing the media on the breakthrough today, DSP (Sadar) Vikas Chandra Srivastava said that they had used fake identity and cheques to withdraw the money. "More people are associated with this well-organised gang of bank frauds. Others will be arrested very soon," Srivastava said.

Pankaj and Ganesh had criminal antecedents and were arrested last year by Doranda police for illegally transferring Rs 29 lakh from the accounts of Rahil Barjo and Polush Barjo with fake bank cheques.

Police sources said that the mastermind was one Vivek Kumar of Patna (Bihar) who arranged fake cheques and created accounts where money was transferred.

The land acquisition department is responsible for acquiring land for government use and also distributes compensation to people whose plots are acquired. The department has the account (a/c No 2869201000271) with Canara Bank.

The gang used four fake cheques of the bank having serial numbers 704395, 704396, 704397 and 704398 and transferred the Rs 2 crore to Vishwajeet Dey of Kharagpur (HDFC a/c No 10652000001285, Rs 45 lakh), Rajendra Prasad of Kharagpur (Axis Bank a/c No 915020055492310, Rs 48.60 lakh), Nasirulhaq of Gajiabad (ICICI Bank a/c No 025501509143, Rs 58.14 lakh) and Swastik Solution Delhi (Central Bank a/c No 3166984448, about Rs 49.62 lakh).

The money was transferred on February 12 and an FIR was lodged with Gonda thana in this regard on February 19.

After detecting the crime, police approached concerned banks to freeze these accounts and retrieved about Rs 87 lakh. The criminals managed to withdraw the rest.

"Holders of the accounts, which were used to transfer the money, were also part of this game and will be arrested. However, the owner of Swastik Solution, Antul Verma, has said that he was not the part of this scam," said Gonda OC Ramesh Kumar.