Greater Noida: A week after the Indian Railway’s ticketing arm, the IRCTC, issued an advisory cautioning users of its website against online frauds, a Greater Noida resident filed a police complaint alleging that an unknown man duped him of ₹98,000 by using his debit card details on the IRCTC portal.
In e-mails sent to registered users, IRCTC had said, “Customers are advised in their own interest not to disclose any confidential information related to their Account number, ATM card, PIN, TPIN, CVV no. UPI details over phones/SMS/ e-mails, no matter how convincing/appealing such calls, mails may be. There are attempts fraudulently withdraw money from your accounts.”
The victim, Manish Chandra Bajpai, is a resident of Eros Sampoornam Society in Greater Noida (West). He works as a sales manager at a private company based in Gurugram.
As per the complaint filed at Bisrakh police station, Bajpai said he has a joint savings account with his wife in a private bank.
He said that the fraud took place on January 25, when his wife had suddenly received text messages of 8-10 transactions from their account. “My wife had used the card at some local shops and grocery stores recently. It appears that someone cloned the card and used the details to make fraudulent transactions and siphoned off ₹98,000 from our account,” he said.
Bajpai added that the messages he received of the transactions showed that the money was spent on the IRCTC portal. “It was only after we became aware of the fraud that I read about the recent advisory issued by the IRCTC about a shell company made in their name that was duping a lot of their users. I don’t understand how they got our account details because I made no bookings on the IRCTC recently,” he added.
{{/usCountry}}Bajpai added that the messages he received of the transactions showed that the money was spent on the IRCTC portal. “It was only after we became aware of the fraud that I read about the recent advisory issued by the IRCTC about a shell company made in their name that was duping a lot of their users. I don’t understand how they got our account details because I made no bookings on the IRCTC recently,” he added.
{{/usCountry}}Based on Bajpai’s complaint, Bisrakh police lodged an FIR against unknown persons under Section 66D of IT Act 2008. “We have registered a case and launched an investigation into the matter,” Munesh Kumar Chauhan, station house officer, Bisrakh Police station, said.