Indore Digital Arrest: City Woman Falls Prey, 3 College Students From Chhatarpur Arrested For ₹4.98 lakh Cyber Fraud

Indore (Madhya Pradesh): Three college students from Chhatarpur were arrested on Saturday in connection with duping a woman of Rs 4.89 lakh by keeping her digitally arrested in the city.

The accused had contacted the woman by posing themselves as officers from an international courier service and Mumbai cyber cell. The accused had provided a bank account to the gang.

DCP (crime) Rajesh Kumar Tripathi informed Free Press that the woman had received a call from an unidentified number on November 9 and the caller had posed himself as an officer from an international courier service informing that a parcel which was booked from Mumbai to Iran was stopped by the customs in Mumbai as drugs and other illegal items were recovered from the parcel.

The caller had informed that her Aadhaar number was found linked with the parcel so she had to lodge a complaint with Mumbai cybercrime cell. Later, the caller had transferred the call to another person, who posed himself as an officer from Mumbai cyber cell. He told the woman to reach Mumbai to lodge a complaint and when she told that she was unable to reach Mumbai to lodge the complaint, the accused assured that he would register her complaint on the video call. He later connected her call to the video call. According to the woman, the screen of the accused was black.

While talking, the accused asked to give her bank account details and told her to transfer the entire money from her bank account to check her account details. The woman was scared of the accused so she had transferred Rs 4.89 lakh to a bank account provided by the accused.

Then the accused informed the woman that the documents were linked with two bank accounts and the money received in the accounts was related to money laundering. After transferring money, the woman again tried to talk with the accused but their phones were switched off. A case under sections 318 (4), 316 (5), 111 (4) of the BNS was registered against the callers.

During the investigation, the crime branch team managed to arrest Narendra Kumar Ahirwar, Aniket Patel and Omnarayan Ahirwar, the residents of Chhatarpur district. The accused allegedly informed the police that they are college students and to earn money, Narendra had given his bank account to Aniket and Aniket had provided the same to Omnarayan. Omnarayan had provided the bank account to the gang involved in duping people.

Omnarayan had come in contact with gang members through a social media platform. Narendra and Ankit had received Rs 5,000 to 10,000 as a commission while Omnarayan had received Rs 30,000 to provide bank account to the thug gang.

The accused are on police remand and they are being questioned for other people and trying to identify the gang members as well.