If you thought digital display is foolproof, think again...

Hameed Ashraf | NT

Bengaluru: Next time when you buy groceries, ensure that you are not being cheated in terms of its weight.

Kamakshipalya police have busted a gang of 17 people involved in tampering of weighing machines by integrating a chip operated by a remote-controlled device to give false measurement in the city. The accused were identified by the police as Naveen Kumar, 30, Somashekhar, 33, Vinesh Patel, 22, Rajesh Kumar, 43, Vatarayan, 42, Meghanadan, 38, K Lokesh, 39, Gangadhar, 32, Lokesh, 24, Chandrashekhar, 41, Mohammed Ishaq, 30, Ranganath, 38, Anantaiah, 44, Shivanna, 51, Samiullah, 65, Vishwanath, 54, and Madhusudhan.

Speaking to News Trail, a police officer said that the arrests were made based on a complaint filed by a resident, Ganesh, at the Kamakshipalya Police Station alleging that a paper mart dealer, Vigneshwar Old Paper Mart, in Maruthinagar, had cheated him.

A probe was conducted by the police following which it was found that the dealer was one among many accused involved in the fraud. Deputy Commissioner of Police, Bengaluru West Division, Laxman B Nimbargi, formed a special team to track the gang while the accused dealer was being interrogated by the jurisdictional police for further information.

It was revealed that the prime accused Somashekhar and Naveen Kumar, had obtained a licence from the Department of Legal Metrology (LMD) while working for a private scales sales and service firm. The duo had learned how to assemble and connect the devices to weighing machines. Later, they also learnt about programming a circuit board used in electronic weighing machines by watching videos on Youtube and then calibrated it to two different settings.

DCP Laxman B Nimbargi said, "While confessing to the crime, the accused persons disclosed that there was a high demand for such weighing machines. They said that one had to press a button in the machine to operate it for a false reading. In case a customer got suspicious, the machine was reset by pressing a ‘secret’ button," he said. Several dealers who had purchased weighing scales from the duo and were cheating their customers for the last two-three years have also been arrested, said the police.

On interrogation, the prime accused revealed details of dealers and merchants who have purchased programmed weighing scales from them, which included fair price shops, fruit shops, scrap dealers, meat shops and a poultry and fish vendor in Kamakshipalya Police Station limits.