Bengal police’s cybercrime wing has drawn up an FIR against industrialist Pawan Kumar Ruia and his family members for allegedly parking proceeds of various online scams across the country in their bank accounts.

The police have initiated a suo motu case based on their probe into cybercrime cases whose proceeds — amounting to ₹315 crore — were traced to bank accounts of shell
companies belonging to members of the Ruia family, police sources said.

Attempts to contact Ruia for a response yielded no result.

A raid was conducted on Friday at the home of Ruia, whose non-functional Jessop and Dunlop the Bengal government had tried to take over a few years ago.

According to the National Crime Reporting Portal (NCRP), 1,379 complaints were registered against the accounts of the shell companies as of October 31. The police said over a hundred of these complaints were from Bengal.

“We have started investigating the case,” said a senior officer.

“During the probe, we found that these victims were cheated with false promises of huge returns on investments or through digital arrest and other types of cyber scams,” said the officer.

A probe into one such case revealed that the proceeds of a cybercrime had landed in an account linked to Hughli Machineries Pvt Ltd. The money was then transferred twice to two accounts belonging to the same company.

When the investigators scanned the company’s PAN details, it was found that at least 544 cyber fraud complaints had been reported to the NCRP against these bank accounts that were involved in fraudulent transactions worth ₹97 crore, the police said.

When the cops dug deeper into these accounts, they found a network of 16 beneficiary firms having 11 common directors. They included Gain E Commerce, Melrose
Creation Private Limited, Dahisar Traders Private Limited and Xettle Technologies Private Limited.

“These 11 people are directors of 186 companies throughout India. Out of these 186 companies, 147 are registered under the Registrar of Companies, Calcutta, and 73 companies out of these 147 have the same registered addresses — 9, Ezra Street, Calcutta-700001. The physical verification of the registered address of these 73 companies and local enquiry revealed that no such offices exist there,” a senior officer said.

The names of Pawan Kumar Ruia, Sarita Ruia, Raghav Ruia, Pallavi Ruia and Sakshi Ruia have allegedly come up as the beneficiaries of the proceeds of crimes, the police said.

“The inquiry so far has revealed that there are many bank accounts in the name of these persons and money from 23 reported cyber frauds have directly landed in their bank accounts,” the officer said.

Pawan Ruia had been arrested in 2016 for the alleged theft of railway equipment from the Jessop factory.