Two-month ‘digital arrest’: Bhuj woman duped out of 83L

Rajkot: A 60-year-old retiree living alone in Bhuj was extorted of Rs 83 lakh over two months by cybercriminals pretending to be officials from the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI), Mumbai Police, the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) and even the Supreme Court. Rajyalakshmi Joshi received a phone call on Nov 26 from an unknown number claiming to be from TRAI. The caller said a sim card issued in her name was being used for illegal activities and would be deactivated. The call was then transferred to someone claiming to be from Colaba police station in Mumbai. According to the FIR, the person at the other end told Joshi that a bank account registered in her name was involved in suspicious transactions worth Rs 6 crore, linking her to a money-laundering case. When Joshi said she was in Bhuj and could not travel to Mumbai, the call was disconnected. Later that day, Joshi got a WhatsApp video call from another unknown number. The caller, dressed in a police uniform, identified himself as Vijay Verma, a sub-inspector from Colaba police station. He repeated the allegations and threatened to deactivate her sim card if the call was disconnected. The cybercriminals stepped up the pressure by adding others to the video call who claimed to be senior CBI officers and later a Supreme Court judge. Joshi was shown fake arrest warrants and forged Supreme Court orders via WhatsApp and was threatened with arrest and house arrest. Police said the victim was kept in constant fear and under surveillance through continual video calls, a modus operandi commonly referred to as "digital arrest". She was told not to disconnect the calls, even while going to her bank or buying groceries. Between Nov 28 and Jan 23, she transferred Rs 83.44 lakh in tranches to accounts in private, nationalized and small payment banks. The victim and her sister also took out an overdraft loan against a joint National Savings Certificate (NSC) account from a cooperative bank. Joshi even travelled to Delhi to get her sister to sign for the loan. Fed up with the continual hounding and on her sister's advice, she finally called the Cyber Crime helpline. Local police visited her the next day, told her she had been duped, and got her to register a formal complaint.