3 months on, no headway in online shopping scam

CHANDIGARH: Though over three months have passed since the filing of a complaint regarding an online shopping scam, Chandigarh police' cyber crime cell, which usually boasts of prompt redressal of complaints, is still sitting over the plea.
Ironically, the victim had herself conducted a probe, collected evidence and submitted them with the police but still no FIR (first information report) has been registered in the case.The complainant rued that most of the times inquiry officer made excuses that they were waiting for revert from the shopping portal. According to the complaint filed with cyber cell (Sector 17), Rs 30,990 were debited from the account of Bimla Devi, a resident of sector 40, at 6.19 pm on September 8. At around 7.01 pm, another amount of Rs. 15,699 was deducted from her account with Punjab National Bank. The victim, who was retired from Punjab government's social security department in 2011, received alert messages on her mobile phone regarding the money transfer.
"First I filed a complaint at the single window in Sector 9 police headquarters and it took over 10 days for the complaint to reach cyber cell, giving enough time for the accused to remove the evidence. Since then I am regularly visiting the cyber cell office and meeting officials, but still no FIR has been registered. They only informed me that shopping was done from Homeshop18 shopping portal," said distraught Bimla Devi.
"After receiving cold response from police, I myself inquired into the matter from portal officials and collected crucial information. Rs 30,990 was used to order a laptop whereas Rs 15,699 was used to buy a smart-phone but they said that they could give buyer's details like address and phone number only to police. I then gave these details to the police and asked them to look into the matter. Still no concrete result has come out," she said. However, police contacted shopping portal officials only after the victim herself collected important details and forced the cops to approach them.
"The address given by the shopping portal was of some labourer also named Bimla Devi. Probe takes time as we have to take permission from various quarters and have to follow a set procedure," said a cyber cell official.
It should be noted that in September 2013, a similar case was reported where a resident of Sector 34 had lost Rs 83,000 in an online scam, but that case is pending.