A Chandigarh court has dismissed the bail plea of a Maharashtra resident arrested in a ₹77 lakh cyber fraud case in which a city woman was allegedly kept under “digital arrest” for four days and coerced into transferring money to multiple bank accounts.
The accused, Sajid Ahmed, was arrested on August 14, 2025, during the investigation into the case registered on the complaint of Manjit Kaur Bindra.
According to the prosecution, Bindra received a call on July 10, 2025, from a person who claimed that her Aadhaar card had been misused to obtain SIM cards and open bank accounts in Mumbai for money laundering. She was allegedly threatened with the freezing of her bank accounts if she failed to disclose her investment and bank deposit details.
She was subsequently connected with two men through WhatsApp video calls, who identified themselves as Vijay Khanna and Vishal Gupta. Both allegedly appeared in police uniforms, with one posing as a station house officer (SHO) and the other as an investigating officer.
The complainant was told that two arrest warrants had been issued against her in a money laundering case. The accused also allegedly claimed that a bank account opened in Canara Bank, Mumbai, was being used for money laundering by a former chairman of an airline, and that she was on the list of suspects.
{{/usCountry}}The complainant was told that two arrest warrants had been issued against her in a money laundering case. The accused also allegedly claimed that a bank account opened in Canara Bank, Mumbai, was being used for money laundering by a former chairman of an airline, and that she was on the list of suspects.
{{/usCountry}}The men allegedly kept her on continuous WhatsApp calls from July 10 to July 14, 2025. They also sent her purported legal documents, including a petition addressed to the chief justice of India seeking attachment of her assets and an alleged Supreme Court order directing an investigation.
Under pressure, Bindra transferred a total of ₹77,42,420 to various bank accounts, suffering a substantial financial loss, the prosecution told the court.
An FIR was registered under Sections 308 (extortion), 319(2) (cheating by personation), 318(4) (cheating), 336(3) (forgery), 338 (forgery of valuable security), 340(2) (using forged document as genuine) and 61(2) (criminal conspiracy) of the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita (BNS).
Seeking bail, Ahmed’s counsel argued that he had been falsely implicated, was not named in the FIR and there was no direct evidence linking him to the alleged fraud.
Opposing the plea, the public prosecutor submitted that ₹37 lakh of the defrauded amount had been credited to Ahmed’s bank account and subsequently utilised by him.
Dismissing the bail application, the court observed that the accused received the alleged fraud proceeds in his account and failed to disclose details of the financial transactions. Taking into account the gravity of the offence, the court held that he was not entitled to the concession of bail.