Police arrested two persons on Sunday for allegedly masquerading as officials of nationalised banks to defraud the West Bengal State Co-operative Bank of Rs 60 crore in a copycat instance of the fraud that had rocked the infrastructure finance corporation.

Officers of the detective department traced Debabrata Dey and Rajkumar Sinha to their hideout in Salt Lake after more than a month and a half of chasing clues.

Dey has been named one of the key players in the conspiracy to issue forged certificates against fixed deposit schemes after hoodwinking senior bureaucrats into investing the money.

His modus operandi was similar to that of the scamsters behind the Rs 120-crore fraud in the West Bengal Infrastructure Development Finance Corporation (WBIDFC), the police said.

Indrajit Chatterjee, the alleged mastermind of the Rs 120-crore fraud, and his associates had posed as representatives of UCO Bank and convinced bureaucrats to deposit government money in fixed deposit accounts.

Chatterjee would issue forged certificates in lieu of the deposited cash.

The police have recovered Rs 1.27 crore of that amount from an arrested senior manager of the bank’s Circus Avenue branch. An accountant with the WBIDFC has also been arrested for his alleged complicity in the fraud.

The co-operative bank fraud was detected early last month when it applied for premature withdrawal of a Rs 20-crore term deposit with UCO Bank. By then, the Rs 120-crore fraud in the WBIDFC was already under investigation.

The co-operative bank soon came to know that the certificate it had been issued against the term deposit with the Hastings branch of UCO Bank had been forged.

Worse, the certificates for term deposits with the Gariahat branch of Indian Overseas Bank and the Selimpur branch of Punjab National Bank were also found to be forged.

Officers of the detective department’s bank fraud wing said Indrajit’s arrest gave them leads that helped them catch Dey and Sinha.

“The duo would meet bureaucrats of the co-operation department in star hotels, posing as representatives of UCO and Indian Overseas Bank. We are looking for another person who masqueraded as a top official attached to the PNB,” an officer said.