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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.

Published on: Jan 29, 2026, 07:23:18 IST
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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 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.

  • Debashish Karmakar
    ABOUT THE AUTHOR
    Debashish Karmakar

    Debashish Karmakar is a principal correspondent with the Hindustan Times, Gurugram bureau. He has a vast journalistic experience of almost 14 years of covering crime, court, power, transport, administration, weather and other beats while working across various organisations. He has been covering Gurugram, Faridabad, Nuh, Palwal and other districts of southern Haryana for more than four and a half years. He has produced several breaking and exclusive stories while reporting from the ground where he maintains a strong presence on a daily basis. He writes news articles which are hard-hitting and accurate. With his strong bureaucratic sources, he frequently writes stories to expose the failure of the system forcing authorities to take necessary course-corrective steps. Besides crime, important convictions and court orders, he also writes on human-angle stories, on power issues and challenges faced by the residents on a daily basis in Gurugram and neighbouring areas. In the past, he worked for media houses like The Times of India, where he extensively reported on important government matters and daily proceedings at the Patna High Court. He has also worked in the electronic media and had done ground coverage on the Kedarnath deluge that wrecked Uttarakhand in 2013.Read More

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