65-year-old Noida man defrauded of ₹6.5 lakh

Noida: A 65-year-old Noida man was allegedly duped of nearly ₹6

Noida: A 65-year-old Noida man was allegedly duped of nearly ₹6.5 lakh on the pretext of disconnection of electricity at his native home in Bihar. An FIR in the matter was registered at Sector 39 police station in Noida on Sunday.

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According to the police complaint by Sector 40 resident Gordhan Das Khurwani, the suspects posed as power department officials from his hometown Katihar in Bihar and defrauded almost ₹6.5 lakh from him on Saturday.

“At around 3pm on Saturday, I received a call from an unknown number saying that since I have not been registered on ‘Bihar Bijli’ mobile application, the electricity at my native home in Katihar will be disconnected. The caller asked me to pay ₹10 in order to get registered. In order to pay, they asked me to download some mobile apps on my phone,” said Khurwani, who runs a construction business.

As per the instructions of the caller, the complainant downloaded apps such as ‘AnyDesk’ and ‘Bihar Electricity Bill Pay’. “After the downloads, when I checked my phone, I saw that my text messages were getting deleted on their own. I restarted my phone and saw a message from the bank saying that my internet banking has been disabled. I sensed something wrong and opened internet banking on my laptop and found that it was blocked,” Khurwani said.

Khurwani then called up his bank relationship manager and enquired about the bank details of the day as he was unable to see it because the internet banking was disabled.

“The manager told me that ₹1 lakh was withdrawn four times, ₹25,000 withdrawn five times and ₹24,999 withdrawn four times on the same day,” Khurwani said.

Khurwani added that he came to Noida just two months back. “I used to live in Patna but had recently moved to Noida with my family. It seems that the fraudsters stole my data and targeted me as they knew my Aadhaar card was issued from Katihar,” he said.

Rajeev Kumar, in charge of Sector 39 police station said, “A case has been registered under Section 420 (cheating and dishonestly inducing delivery of property) and other relevant sections of the Indian Penal Code (IPC) as well as Sections 66 (cheating using communication device or computer) of the Information Technology (IT) Act. The matter is being investigated and the suspects will be nabbed soon”.