Sr citizen loses ₹1.08cr under ‘digital arrest’ by frauds posing as DGP Rashmi Shukla

An 80-year-old woman in Mumbai was scammed out of ₹1.08 crore by fraudsters impersonating police officials and claiming her SIM was blocked.

MUMBAI: An 80-year-old resident of Dadar was recently cheated of ₹1.08 crore by cyber fraudsters posing as Maharashtra’s Director General of Police (DGP), Rashmi Shukla. The police said the accused had allegedly placed her under ‘digital arrest’ after initially contacting her by posing as officials of the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI). A case was registered on Sunday against the unidentified accused.

Sr citizen loses ₹1.08cr under ‘digital arrest’ by frauds posing as DGP Rashmi Shukla

The victim is a retired secretary of a multinational pharmaceutical and biotechnology company. On October 27, one of the accused called the woman and pretended to be a TRAI employee, Vijay Khanna, and warned her that her SIM card would be blocked within two hours. When she inquired, he informed her that her Aadhaar number had been misused to facilitate cyber fraud activities.

After some time had passed, she got another call from someone pretending to be an officer at the Colaba police station. He told her that she had been booked in a money-laundering case, with Naresh Goyal as her co-accused. He transferred the call to a woman, who posed as Rashmi Shukla, and asked her to cooperate with the investigators.

The victim told the police that she was asked about her funds and asked to transfer all of them via NEFT/RTGS to the bank accounts that ‘Shukla’ provided, to be refunded in 48 hours upon receipt of a No Objection Certificate after allegations of money laundering were cleared.

“She transferred around ₹1.08 crore from October 31 to November 7. However, after 48 hours had passed, as she had not received the refund, she contacted them. When she did not get any response, she realised she had been cheated,” the officer said.

The Central Cyber police officer of the Mumbai Police registered under Sections 318 (cheating), 319 (cheating by personation), 308 (extortion), 336 (forgery), 340 (fraudulent or dishonest use of a forged document or electronic record as if it were genuine), 204 (personating a public servant), 205 (prohibits wearing a public servant’s uniform or carrying an official token with fraudulent intent) and 61 (criminal conspiracy) of the Bhartiya Nyay Sanhita, 2023, and various sections of the Information Technology Act.