In serious cybercrime cases, anticipatory bail should be denied when there is a prima facie case and custodial interrogation is necessary for further investigation.

ORDER:

This Criminal Petition, under Section 438 of Cr.P.C. (New Section 482 of Bharatiya Nagarik Suraksha Sanhita , 2023), is filed by the petitioner/A.9 seeking anticipatory bail in connection with Crime No.310 of 2024 of Cyber Crime Police Station, Visakhapatnam District, registered for the offences punishable under Sections 111, 319(2), 318(4), 61(2), 336(2), 336(3) and 340(2) of BNS and Sections 66-C, 66-D of IT Act, 2000-2008 and Sections 3 and 4 of the A.P. Gaming Act .

2. Heard Sri D.Purna Chandra Reddy, the learned counsel for the petitioner and the learned Assistant Public Prosecutor for respondent-State.

3. Perused the record.

4. In the grounds it is urged and the learned counsel for petitioner argued that the petitioner is innocent of the offences alleged against him and he is falsely implicated in this case. The allegations are invented with a view to accusing this petitioner so as to bring him to their terms under pressure. On baseless suspicions the case is foisted against him and the name of the petitioner is shown in the remand report of other accused and the remand report of other accused would not indicate any role played by this petitioner. Even the confessions of co-accused/A.1 and A.2 which are mentioned in the remand report do not even disclose the name of this petitioner. Since the police are after the petitioner, he apprehends his arrest on baseless allegations and seeks pre-arrest bail.

5. Strong objections are raised by the learned Assistant Public Prosecutor Sri Sandeep on behalf of the State. He argued that this Crime pertains to an Agent involved in a Cyber Scam which is termed as "Chinese Scam by the Cyber Crime PS., Visakhapatnam. The objective of the Chinese Scam is to cheat the Indians through various cyber frauds by using Indian nationals as agents and convert such looted Indian currency to Crypto currency and ultimately, transfer the amounts to China.

6. So far the investigation agency has identified three types of agents being employed by the Chinese they are:

1. Type 1 Agents: To secure accounts and activate the same for the purpose of Transfer.

2. Type 2 Agents: To secure employees (Indian Nationals) and make them commit the cybercrimes against the Indians.

3. Type 3 Agents: To cheat the Indians (victims) and make them transfer amounts from victim accounts to their activated accounts by using various Cybercrime frauds.

7. According to prosecution, the modus operandi is in five steps.

Step 1: Secure Bank Accounts (these accounts are called mule accounts as they are not yet activated).

Step 2: Activate bank account. Activating an account means the secured account details will be shared with Chinese people, who activate internet banking through their specialized Chinese "TRX Application", which will enable them to get OTP's and manage Internet Banking Passwords so that they can further transfer the amounts credited in their activated accounts from the victim's account to multiple accounts hassle free without any intervention of others. (Activated accounts give complete control to the Chinese people or their agents to transfer amounts to multiple accounts). It is stated that the TRX Application is a payment gateway which is illegal and not an authorized payment gateway approved by the Reserve Bank of India.

Step 3: Cheating Indians (victims) by making them transfer amounts from their accounts to activated accounts by using various Cybercrime frauds. (The main Cybercrime frauds used against the victims are Fedex Fraud, TRAI Fraud, Stock Market Fraud, Part time Job Fraud, Task Fraud, Crypto currency Fraud etc...

Step 4: Transferring of the credited amounts from the Victim accounts to layers of accounts consisting hundreds of activated accounts in each layer, so that the accounts may not be traced by the Indian Cyber Crime Police.

Step 5: After going through number of layers of accounts, the Victim amounts will go to one consolidated account, where the same will be converted to Crypto Currency and from there