Cyber criminals on prowl, man duped of Rs 20 lakh

Tribune News Service

PK Jaiswar

Amritsar, September 29

In yet another instance, a local resident was duped of over Rs 20 lakh by online fraudsters. Following a preliminary probe, the police have booked seven persons of Tamil Nadu, Bihar and Maharashtra.

The amount was transferred to their bank accounts on different occasions. The incident occurred in May, while a case was registered following a probe by the cyber crime cell here.

The victim was identified as Jaswinder Singh of Basarke Bhaini village. He used to work as a driver at Sri Guru Ramdas Institute of Medical Sciences and Research at Vallah. He had borrowed the amount after he was tricked by the online fraudsters.

According to the police, Jaswinder Singh got a call from an Internet-generated number and the caller identified himself as his nephew Varinder Singh who was living in Canada. The caller said his friend had a dispute with a Canadian national, who had hit him with a bottle. He was admitted to a hospital in serious condition. Varinder (the caller) asked him to help him and deposit Rs 1.5 lakh in his bank account.

The victim did not realise about the fraud and transferred the amount in his bank account for getting his release from the police. Later, he said he got a number of calls from the suspect who tricked him to transfer more amount on different occasion. He said he transferred around Rs 20 lakh in different bank accounts.

Assistant Commissioner of Police (East) Gurpartap Singh Sahota said following investigations by cyber crime unit, a case under Sections 420 and 120-B of the IPC and Section 66-D of the Information Technology Act was registered against the suspects.

They were identified as Kaleevaran and Merina Cindrella of Tamil Nadu; Sanjiwani Sharma of Bihar; Abhishek Chaurey of Madhya Pradesh; Meghan Mahato of Jharkhand, Sarfraj Alam of Amritsar and Madan Sada of Maharashtra. They were identified through the bank accounts where money was transferred. He said further investigations were on to verify the details of these bank account holders.

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