Bengal ‘tab scam’: 1,900 students defrauded, 93 complaints filed as probe widens

A cyber scam targeting West Bengal’s ‘Taruner Swapno’ scheme, which provides Rs 10,000 to Class 10 and 12 students for purchasing tablets, has affected 1,911 students out of 16 lakh beneficiaries. The West Bengal Police have registered 93 FIRs and arrested 11 people in connection with the fraud.
South Bengal Additional Director General Supratim Sarkar said the investigation has revealed the involvement of cybercriminal gangs operating across multiple states, including Maharashtra, Rajasthan, and Jharkhand.
“We found that interstate gangs were behind this fraud. Some of the arrested individuals admitted to past scams, including misuse of Direct Benefit Transfer (DBT) schemes and the national scholarship portal,” Sarkar said.
A Special Investigation Team (SIT) has been formed to probe the case. Kolkata Police and the CID department are also conducting raids across the state to nab the hackers and the mastermind of the fund diversion fraud.
A probe into the complaints lodged in Kolkata found that, in most cases, the money went into the bank accounts of residents of Chopra, Islampur and nearby areas.
Under the scheme, higher secondary students in government-aided schools and madrasas get a one-time benefit of Rs 10,000 to purchase tabs for educational purposes. The money directly gets credited to the bank account of students after the concerned school puts the data and bank account details of the eligible students on a government portal.
The school authorities need to log into the portal using the user ID of the school to create the database. Police said, as per preliminary investigation, that the scammers managed to hack the user ID and password of targeted schools and replaced their bank accounts with those of the students.