West Bengal: Crypto app fraud claims life of Visva-Bharati student, 4 held

SANTINIKETAN: The Birbhum police arrested four persons - all Kolkata residents - for allegedly duping Visva-Bharati student Anamika Singh of Rs 2.3 lakh after promising her huge returns on crypto investments made via an app.

A Varansi native, Singh - a third-year student of Silpa-Sadana - died on Sept 5 allegedly after consuming poison in her hostel room, the postmortem report had indicated.

The student had borrowed money from her classmates, professors and even her mother to invest. Police said the accused were part of a racket, which operated on the Telegram messaging app.

Police sources claimed that the arrested persons were identified as Faiz Ali, Md Kaif, Jahid Hossain and Kamran. Birbhum police superintendent, Rajnarayan Mukherjee, said, "This fake investment app has a multi-layered operation. In Anamika's case, they gained her trust by giving her returns twice till she made substantial amount of investment. The crypto investment was made in USDt, a crypto currency like Bitcoin. They used to collect money from gullible victims and invest the same in the Binance platform. They paid some returns initially, but duped most."

Mukherjee claimed that the police were suspecting that the arrested four were only middlemen in the racket that had Sk Kamran as its kingpin. "The top layer of this racket - in what they call conglomerate - is yet to be traced. They operated in such a manner that one arm did not know the other," the SP said.

Acting on the complaint lodged by Anamika's mother, police have now registered an abetment to suicide FIR. "My daughter was forced to die. There was mounting pressure on her," her mother alleged.

She, however, did not elaborate. The SP said, "Our investigations have indicated that this (the suicide) was committed due to huge financial burden on the victim for the unpaid loans to her peers and family. She has been duped by this gang." Another police officer said there could be multiple other victims of the gang.