In a swift, yet covert operation, officers from the ‘Q’ branch police from Madurai apprehended four Sri Lankan men at the airport here for their alleged involvement in an ATM card cloning racket that shook the city recently.

Police officials said they acted on information revealed by two men, who disclosed after their arrest over the weekend that the four men were to arrive from Bangkok around 11.45 pm on Monday night.

Immigration officials said they were alerted to look out for Shanmugam Muralidaran, Prakash, Damodaran Pillai and Sudhananda, when they reached Chennai on a Thai Airways flight. “As soon as they came into immigration and showed Canadian passports, we knew it was them and detained them,” confirmed an immigration sleuth, who added that the arrests were not official yet.

As reported by Express, the ATM card cloning racket targeted businessmen, who shopped abroad, and procured their card details. The racket was unearthed in Madurai and two arrests had been made.

Sources said prime accused Mohammed Imran gave police information on when the men would arrive here.

Rather intriguingly, airport sources said word initially got around that the four men were being arrested for LTTE links.

A senior police official at the airport said the men was questioned in Chennai through Tuesday by intelligence officers to unearth the fraud network they had built. “I don’t know if they are LTTE, but they have Canadian passports that indicate that they may have gotten them with their refugee status. They may have been brought up by SL Tamils in Canada or UK, it is unclear,” said the officer. (ENS)