Surat man arrested from IGI airport for duping ₹2.9 crore from Gurugram woman

A lookout notice was issued against him in August; hence, his arrival from Cambodia was immediately reported to the Gurugram police and he was arrested on December 7.

Published on: Dec 12, 2025, 09:12:00 IST

By Debashish Karmakar

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Gurugram: A 28-year-old man was arrested from the Delhi airport soon after arriving from Cambodia for allegedly duping an 82-year-old Gurugram woman of ₹2.92 crore in a case of “digital arrest”, police said on Thursday.

According to officials, the suspect, Chirag Kanji Bhai, hailed from Surat and had been working as a telecaller for an alleged Chinese cybercrime gang that operated from Cambodia. A lookout notice had been issued against him in August; hence, his arrival from Cambodia was immediately reported to the Gurugram police and he was arrested on December 7.

Police officials said that Chirag had gone to Dubai on a work visa in 2021, from where he shifted to Cambodia to work for the gang.

Sandeep Turan, public relations officer of Gurugram police, said it was Chirag who called up the elderly woman in December 2024, and impersonated a telecom department official. “Chirag convinced the woman that her son’s Aadhaar and phone numbers were being used for carrying out hawala transactions, and coerced her into transferring ₹2.9 crore into various accounts,” Turan said.

“Chirag would get commission in Cambodian currency, which he used to purchase Bitcoins before converting them into Indian currency,” he said.

In July, police arrested Khushbu Chaudhary from the Delhi airport, another telecaller linked to the gang who was among the first to contact the 82-year-old.

Police said Chirag was on a police remand for questioning till Tuesday, and later forwarded to judicial custody after production before a city court.

According to police, 19 suspects have been arrested so far in the case, including 36-year-old visa consultant Ashishbhai Ramanlal Rana, who arranged visas for these suspects to travel to Dubai and Cambodia.

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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