Delhi jeweller held in ₹1.9 Cr fraud targeting elderly Faridabad couple

Police said ₹10.1 lakh of the defrauded amount was routed through a mule account opened using his showroom details. ₹30 lakh has been frozen.

A 51-year-old jewellery showroom owner was arrested in Delhi for his alleged involvement in a cyber fraud in which ₹1.9 crore was syphoned off from an elderly couple residing in Faridabad’s Sector 29, police said on Wednesday.

The victims were impersonated by a caller posing as an RBI official and coerced into transferring money into eight accounts across states. (Getty Images/iStockphoto)

The accused was identified as Amit Shakuja, a resident of Tagore Garden in West Delhi, where he owns a jewellery showroom, police said. They added Shakuja was arrested on January 23 and produced before a city court the following day, which granted a three-day police remand. He was sent to judicial custody on Tuesday.

Yashpal Yadav, public relations officer of Faridabad police, said Shakuja owns a showroom named VS Jewellers in West Delhi. “He had used the firm’s details to open a mule current account which he had shared with a suspect who was associated with the cyber criminals,” Yadav said.

Yadav added that out of the total ₹1.9 crore defrauded from the victims, ₹10.1 lakh was credited into Shakuja’s current account. “Overall, we have been able to freeze at least ₹30 lakh out of ₹1.9 crore in various bank accounts. Raids are still going on at several locations to trace and arrest the other suspects whose accounts were used in the crime and the suspected gang members who had rung the couple,” Yadav said.

Investigators said the couple, both in their late 70s, received a call on December 9 from a person impersonating a Reserve Bank of India official, who falsely claimed their bank accounts were involved in money laundering. The victims were coerced into transferring money into eight mule accounts across Uttarakhand, Odisha, West Bengal, Punjab and other states, eventually losing ₹1.9 crore by December 19. Last month, an FIR was filed against unidentified suspects under section 318(4) (cheating and dishonestly inducing delivery of property) of the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita at the Cyber Crime Central police station in Faridabad.