UP Police Busts Gang That Fraudulently Claimed Health Insurance of 500 People, 4 Held

Lucknow/Noida: Cyber sleuths of UP police's Special Task Force (STF) on Monday arrested four men who allegedly duped health insurance companies to the tune of Rs 2 crore by claiming benefits on forged documents of around 500 people, officials said.

The accused, including the gang's kingpin, were held around 5.30 pm from Noida by the cyber team of the STF and the local police, the officials said. Those arrested have been identified as Amit Tyagi, Ankur Tyagi, Harsh Mishra and Saurabh Bhandari, a senior agency official said.

Additional Superintendent of Police, STF, Vishal Vikram Singh said, "96 seals of various doctors and hospitals, around 4,500 letter heads of various hospitals, 11 mobile phones, 50 hospital admission receipts, 18 credit/debitcards, seven forged hospital documents were seized from them."

The STF said several doctors, hospital staffers and people who got their health insurance done had agreed to help the gang on a 30 per cent cut each from the money claimed, while the gang members kept 40 per cent for themselves.

"A detailed investigation is underway to probe the role of such doctors and people and tough action would be taken against those found guilty," Singh added. During probe, Amit Tyagi, the kingpin of the gang, told STF that he worked in a private healthcare firm when in 2014 he met an executive of the same company who shared with him the trick of the trade.

"The executive showed Tyagi how to forge documents and claim money from insurance companies. In lust for money, Tyagi then started doing this work, left the job and contacted some doctors in Noida and Hapur and also purchased data of people in Delhi NCR who had bought health insurance," the STF said.

Tyagi made so much money from the fraud that he opened up his own hospital in Hapur district, according to the agency. An FIR has been registered at Noida's Sector 58 police station under Indian Penal Code sections 420 (fraud) 467, 468, 471 (all related to forgery) and under Section 66 of the Information Technology Act, the STF said.