Delhi Police arrest 65 BSES imposters across 22 cities

A BSES official on condition of anonymity said BSES has regularly been issuing message alerts, posters and banners to alert consumers to make them aware about such scams

The Intelligence Fusion and Strategic Operations (IFSO) unit, a specialised team under the Delhi Police Special Cell, has arrested 65 people for cheating on pretext of updating BSES electricity bills after conducting raids in 22 cities over a period of 10 days, officials said on Thursday.

To bust the network, different teams were constituted and simultaneous raids were conducted in 22 cities, police said. (Representative image)

KPS Malhotra, the deputy commissioner of police (IFSO), said, “Recently, a new modus operandi was noticed in the cyber-crimes reported in the national cybercrime reporting portal (NCRP). It was found that fraudsters are sending random messages to the people that their electricity bill has not been updated... As a result, gullible consumers… made calls to the number mentioned in the message. Through social engineering, the fraudsters either took the bank account details or installed remote access software. Once the details were shared, the fraudsters would transfer money from the victims’ account.”

“Keeping in view the gravity of the matter, the technical analysis and the financial trail of all the complaints was undertaken together and during the analysis, it was found that the network is spread all over India… To bust the network, different teams were constituted and simultaneous raids were conducted in 22 cities,” he said. “This pan-India operation, which started on August 26, has shown very good results and the number of complaints related to the BSES scam has reduced significantly.”

A BSES official on condition of anonymity said BSES has regularly been issuing message alerts, posters and banners to alert consumers to make them aware about such scams.