Ranchi: A fraudster, who had used cloned cheques to withdraw Rs 7.50 lakh from the bank account of a city-based builder, was arrested from Lalpur on Tuesday and sent to Birsa Munda Jail on Wednesday.

The accused Abhishek Kumar (35), an employee of a courier company engaged in the delivery of cheques from one bank to the other, had forged the cheques of Anand Construction owned by businessman Rajesh Agrawal, who has an account in the Lalpur branch of Bank of India.

Kumar has been booked under Section 420 (cheating), 467 (forgery of valuable security), 468 (forgery for purpose of cheating), 471 (using as genuine a forged document or electronic record) and 34 (criminal conspiracy) at Lalpur police station.

Several cheque and passbooks, ATM cards, deposit slips and a bundle of cloned cheques were recovered from him.

Explaining the modus operandi, city DSP R.K. Mehta on Wednesday told the media that Abhishek used to scan the original cheque and prepare a forged one by altering some details but keeping the signature intact. To avoid detection, he used to put a cheque number that was higher by a number than the original.

"He used to target those accounts that witnessed frequent and huge transactions to avoid suspicion," Mehta said.

BoI chief general manager Shailesh Kumar Dubey had alerted the police about the suspicious activity in the builder's account following the dubious withdrawal of Rs 5.35 lakh about two days ago.

When Agrawal visited the bank branch on Tuesday , he was taken aback when his request for a transfer Rs 11 lakh was declined owing to insufficient amount in his account.

Abhishek was nabbed on Tuesday when he came to the bank to deposit another forged cheque to withdraw Rs 2.18 lakh from Agrawal's account.

"Police were monitoring everyone who was coming to deposit cheques and zeroed in on Abhishek. The cheque was cloned so smartly that it looks exactly like the original. However, the print of the cloned cheque will start fading after a few weeks," the DSP said.

The accused has confessed that he had taken out money from other accounts in a similar manner.

Though the DSP ruled out the involvement of any bank employee, he couldn't answer why officials at the cheque clearance desk could not distinguish between a scanned signature and original one.

Mehta said the accused had revealed the name of some of his associates, indicating the involvement of an inter-state gang.

In May last year, Lalpur police had arrested three persons namely Santosh Kumar Chourasia, Mrityunjay Kumar alias Vicky and Amarjeet Singh alias Bittu for withdrawing Rs 30 lakh from various accounts with cloned cheques.