Varanasi: Three more persons have been arrested in connection with duping a retired teacher of Rs 3.55 crore in a cyber fraud case last month, police said.
Police recovered Rs 1.20 lakh cash, 32 ATM cards, 20 SIM cards, 18 mobile phones, a few PAN cards and cheque books from them. Also, a car value Rs 20 lakh has been seized. With this, a total of 15 accused have been arrested in this case.
The victim, Shampa Rakshit, a retired teacher residing under Sigra police station area, had filed a complaint of cyber fraud on March 8. She alleged that she received a call from an unidentified number. The caller, who posed himself as a staff of Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI), said that her phone will be deactivated in two hours and she would get a call from the police.
After which, a person called and identified himself as Vinay Chaubey from Vile Parle police station in Maharashtra. The fake officer told her that her SIM card was from Ghatkopar and accused her of being involved in illegal activities. He also threatened her that an arrest warrant is being issued against her.
Then, she was asked to stay at home and not inform this to anyone. After which, the caller took details of her bank account and instructed her to transfer an amount to an alleged RBI account. He said that the amount will be refunded following investigation.
The victim was first asked to transfer Rs 3 crore and then Rs 55 lakh to the said account. Later it came to light that she had been duped and the woman lodged a police complaint.
DCP crime Chandrakant Meena said based on a complaint of retired teacher Shampa Rakshit investigations were launched by the cyber crime department. Fifteen accused have been imprisoned in this case so far, of which, three were arrested today and are being sent to jail, Meena said.
The three accused have been identified as prime accused Himanshu Verma alias Tiger, Anant Jain and Deepak Vaswani. All are residents of Rajasthan's Kekri district.
During investigation, the accused told that they used to commit cyber frauds by hiding their identity and passed on information related to the bank account, SIM cards and other details of the victims to the cyber fraudsters.
How to avoid risk of cyber frauds:
- Do not share bank details with anyone over phone
- Don't panic if a caller scares or threatens you and instead inform police
- If anyone includes you in an unknown WhatsApp group, block it immediately
- If a caller poses to be bank employee, police personnel or any other other official and asks for personal information, do not provide details
- Do not click on spam mails, messages or alerts and delete it immediately
- If the phone is in the hands of children then ensure they do not click on any message
- Do not download any unknown App about which you don't have any knowledge
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