Dikhyaa Mohanty 
The Special Task Force (STF) discovered that the two accused, Pritam Kar of Jajpur and Saroj Kumar Nayak of Nayagarh, were engaged in cryptocurrency trading through several Indian and overseas exchanges while looking into an OTP sharing scheme involving Pakistani intelligence agents. Investigations showed that Pritam Kar, the defendant, had registered with a prestigious cryptocurrency exchange using an email address. According to the STF, the accused’s two bank accounts and one UPI ID were connected to the aforementioned trade.
After looking into the specific ID’s cryptocurrency trading history, it was discovered that over the course of two years, the account had more than Rs 1 crore worth of trade activity. The account contained suspicious activity such as transfers of cryptocurrency assets to exchanges outside of India and deposits of cryptocurrency from unidentified sources, namely from the exchanges Coinbase, FTX, and Bitmart.
Investigations also showed that a suspect who had a history of referring hundreds of people to the Crypto platform had recommended the accused Pritam Kar. The STF also stated that the problem is being looked into. Investigations showed that Saroj had used his email address to join up for a major cryptocurrency exchange. His user ID is connected to two UPIs and the numbers of two savings bank accounts. Nearly Rs 3 lakhs worth of cryptocurrency has been traded. Again, INR was removed in this instance via crypto exchanges located outside of India. In this context, STF banned the accused Pritam Kar and Saroj Kumar Nayak’s respective Crypto accounts.
