E-Paper
Panchkula: Retired colonel loses ₹48 lakh in stock-trading fraud
On August 1, the complainant messaged Mehta to inquire about the plans. She assured him that their company was registered and that he could earn significant profits by investing.
A 71-year-old retired colonel of the Indian Army was duped of over ₹48 lakh by cyber fraudsters in a stock-trading scam.
The retired colonel, who resides in Sector 27, Panchkula, told police that in July this year, he was added to a WhatsApp group ‘K-21 Future Investor Forum’ without his consent or knowledge. He discovered the group a week later and found that it had 132 members and three administrators: Anjali Mehta, Reliance Capital, and Shreedhar Rangarajan, who routinely shared stock market investment plans.
On August 1, the complainant messaged Mehta to inquire about the plans. She assured him that their company was registered and that he could earn significant profits by investing.
The fraudsters then persuaded him to download their company’s app, named “RCL PMA,” via a provided link. He also received a WhatsApp call from a person who identified himself as Ravi Mehra from “K-24 customer care”. Mehra provided a bank account number and instructed the colonel to add it as a beneficiary, which he did.
On August 4, the colonel made two transactions totaling ₹49,000 for “pull-up stocks” as advised. The next day, he made three more transactions, depositing a large sum of ₹3.11 lakh, ₹3.11 lakh, and ₹2 lakh into the beneficiary account.
On August 6, the RCL PMA app showed his deposited amount with a 5% profit. On the same day, he transferred ₹8.5 lakh and continued to invest. On August 15, Mehra asked the complainant to deposit an additional ₹34 lakh. The complainant said that he grew suspicious as to how an IPO could be allotted on a national holiday. Thus on August 16, he attempted to withdraw ₹5,000 but failed. Upon this, he confronted Mehra, who disconnected the call. It was then that the complainant realised that he had been defrauded of a total of ₹48.28 lakh, and filed a complaint at the Sector 20 cyber crime police station.
The case has been registered under Section 316(2) (criminal breach of trust), 318(4) (cheating), 336(3)/338 (forgery), 340(2) (using forged documents) and 61(2) (criminal conspiracy) of the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita.
