Jainath police say a Bihar gang sold fake fertiliser franchises. Around ₹3.5 crore is the alleged nationwide cheat.

The promise was a fertiliser-company franchise. The paper under it, police say, was a fake website and a trail of instalments.

On Friday, 21 August 2026, Jainath police in Adilabad district arrested five members of a Bihar-based inter-State cybercrime gang. Adilabad Superintendent of Police Akhil Mahajan said the arrests followed a detailed investigation into a cybercrime case registered at Jainath police station. The five named on the card are Abhishek Kumar alias Sourav, 24; Abinash Kumar, 24; Ritesh Kumar, 24; Ashutosh Kumar alias Bablu, 33; and Nishu Kumar, 25. All are natives of Bihar. Arrested is the verb. Convicted is not.

Police seized 10 mobile phones and ₹70,000 cash. Mahajan said there were around 498 cybercrime complaints against the accused nationwide, and that they were suspected of cheating victims of around ₹3.5 crore. About 90 complaints were in Telangana alone. Around and about are the hedges on those three counts. This desk will not harden them into a court-certified total.

The method on the public card is narrow. The accused allegedly created a fake website offering fertiliser-company franchises and collected Aadhaar, PAN, photographs and bank-account information. They allegedly cheated victims by collecting charges in instalments as service, licence and trade-transfer fees. They also allegedly ran a fake loan scheme and cheated hundreds of people of lakhs of rupees. Hundreds and lakhs are the card’s own soft counts on the loan limb. This desk will not invent a loan-scheme rupee total beyond that line.

One Telangana complainant is named. Ganesh of Mandagada village, Adilabad, was allegedly cheated of ₹3,85,725 on a fertiliser-company franchise promise; then the accused stopped responding, and he went to police. ₹3,85,725 is his alleged loss. It is not a statewide sum. Further probe, the SP said, found they had allegedly invested around ₹8 lakh of alleged fraud proceeds in bank accounts and stock-market shares; that amount was frozen as per procedure. Frozen is not forfeited. Around ₹8 lakh is the freeze figure on this card.

A separate Saturday search card described an operation in Nawada, Bihar, with about 150 Bihar police personnel, alleged stone-pelting by locals, a complainant A Ganesh who paid ₹3.85 lakh after being promised a franchise of National Fertilizer Private Ltd, and a first demand of ₹50,000 registration. Those National Fertilizer brand-name, Nawada, 150-personnel and stone-pelting lines are kept as that card’s allegations. They are not the primary lock this desk treats as settled for every figure. This desk will not invent a Nawada street address or treat stone-pelting as a Telangana finding.

What is not here is a conviction, a lab result on a website server, or a full victim roster. What is here is five Bihar arrests on a Friday, Jainath PS, 10 phones, ₹70,000 cash, around 498 complaints nationwide, about 90 in Telangana, around ₹3.5 crore alleged cheat, ₹3,85,725 alleged from Ganesh of Mandagada, around ₹8 lakh frozen, and a fake franchise-and-loan pitch.

Until a court writes, every franchise fee on this page is allegation. The fertiliser sack was the bait. The website was the shop.