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| Photo Credit: Getty Images/iStockphoto
The story so far: The Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) has widened its offensive against “digital arrest” fraud rings under Operation Chakra-VI. The latest exercise targeted three major cases in which victims were coerced into transferring crores of rupees after being falsely told they were under police custody through video calls. Three accused have been arrested so far. The agency says its search operations were built on detailed scrutiny of bank records and digital account-access trails. The operation is aimed at tracing how the proceeds of crime moved and who ultimately benefited from it.
The agency carried out searches at 89 locations across 20 States. Among those arrested is accused Akash from Haryana, who received ₹1.95 crore of the defrauded funds into an account he had opened himself, moving the money onward the same day. Raja Karmakar of Kolkata has been accused of routing Rs.1.5 crore of the proceeds through his firm’s account, while Jyoti Rani allegedly withdrew part of the funds credited to her account in cash and transferred the rest onward.
The three cases at the centre of this crackdown illustrate the scale of the racket. A BITS Pilani professor was kept under a fabricated “digital arrest” for three months and defrauded of ₹7.67 crore. In October 2023, the victim was contacted by a caller claiming to represent India’s telecom regulator, warning that her mobile phone number was linked to a cybercrime complaint. Persons posing as Mumbai police, Enforcement Directorate, and CBI officials then took over via Skype, falsely linking her to the money-laundering case involving Jet Airways founder Naresh Goyal. The victim was threatened with arrest unless she cooperated.
They claimed that a police warrant had been issued against her. For over three months, she was made to report her daily movements and, believing her funds needed “digital verification”, as told by the fraudsters, the victim withdrew ₹7.67 crore through 42 transactions and deposited the money in various accounts as directed. She had also taken a loan of ₹80 lakh from banks to make the payments.
Source: Read the original article on www.thehindu.com
Written by https://futureknowledge.in/
