NEW DELHI: Delay in informing the police about getting unaccounted money in one’s bank account from any unknown source can spell trouble for the account holder as Supreme Court on Monday refused to protect a man from arrest after noting that he took four months’ time to approach the police after getting Rs 20 lakh in his account, which were proceeds of crime. Seeking anticipatory bail after being summoned by Delhi police for cyber fraud for receiving the money, a resident of Shivnagar village in Bihar’s Nawada sought protection from arrest, alleging his account was misused by his tenant.Account misused by tenant, claims petitioner in money transfer case The petitioner alleged his account was misused by his tenant, who got the details of his account on the pretext of online transfer of the loan amount taken by him and subsequently hacked the account.When advocate Rakesh Singh, appearing for petitioner, contended his client has already appeared in-person before Delhi Police and is cooperating in probe and provided all the information, a bench of Justices Sandeep Mehta and P B Varale asked him only one question about when his client received the money in his account and when he approached the police.As the bench was informed, the petitioner approached police after around four months, as the money got transferred into his account in September last year, and he approached police in January, the bench said the petitioner then could not be granted relief and dismissed his petition.In this case, there were multiple transfers of money to his account from different sources in a single day, which ran to over Rs 5 crore and 13 cases were registered for different transactions, which were done from different parts of the country, including one from Delhi for Rs 20 lakh cyber fraud. The Rs 20 lakh deposited in his account was transferred to three other accounts within hours and Delhi cyber police lodged the case under Section 318(4) of BNS, 2023. The FIR was registered on a complaint given by an authorised representative of a firm, namely Starcon Infra Projects India Pvt Ltd. It is the case of the prosecution that the complainant was defrauded by one person by luring the complainant into transferring a sum of Rs 20 lakh. During the investigation, it was found that the amount was transferred into the bank account of the petitioner in Bihar.The petitioner’s advocate tried to convince the court that his client was running a subsidised canteen for the paramilitary with no criminal past and he was not even aware of the cyber crime while pleading for bail, but the bench refused his plea only on the ground of delay in informing the police about the transaction and said that probe was needed to be done against him.
