Easy loan lending apps: Chinese man came to India as 'expert cook'; 3 central agencies question him

A team of sleuths from various Central investigating agencies on Tuesday landed at Chandigarh Sector 17's cyber cell police station to interrogate Chinese national Wan Chenghua, who was arrested along with 20 others, by the cyber cell for allegedly extorting money from people after trapping them through small easy loan lending applications. According to details available, teams from the Intelligence Bureau, National Investigation Agency, and Research and Analysis Wing visited Chandigarh Police's cyber cell police station here on Monday and questioned Wan Chenghua, who was arrested from Greater Noida on Monday. Chenghua, a resident of Wuhan in China, had traveled to India in 2019 on a work visa, that said that he was a chef. Chenghua's visa had expired in 2021 he continued to live in India illegally. Sources said that officers from various Central agencies grilled Chenghua both jointly and independently, in the presence of a Chinese language interpreter, on Monday for several hours, during which they determined that the man was not very fluent in English. Sources maintained that intelligence agencies are yet to procure the exact name of the company which had issued Wan Chenghua his work visa. "An amount of Rs 17.31 lakh was recovered from the Chinese national and two others on Monday. The money was meant to pay the salaries of 18 people who had been hired to work as agents, and team leaders under Chenghua as well as Anshul Kumar and Parvej Alam, alias Jeetu Bhadana - all of who were involved in managing the domains of online loan applications," Superintendent of Police Ketan Bansal said.