Elderly couple saved from digital arrest scam in Krishna district

Vijayawada: A swift response by the Vuyyuru town police in Krishna district prevented an elderly couple from falling prey to a sophisticated digital arrest scam orchestrated by cyberfraudsters who allegedly operated from a foreign country using an Indian mobile number.According to the police, the cyberfraudsters posing as a Mumbai crime branch contacted the victims, Kota Siva Shankar (70), a retired accountant, and his wife, a retired school teacher, through a WhatsApp video call at around 11 am on Feb 18, while they were alone at their residence near AG & SG College in Vuyyuru.The callers falsely claimed that Rs 25 lakh was laundered using the couple's Aadhaar credentials and alleged that a warrant was issued by the supreme court for their arrest. To lend credibility to their claims, the cyberfraudsters arranged a video call with a person impersonating a Supreme court judge."The cyber fraudster wearing a police uniform was in a continuous video call with the elderly couple for nearly 24 hours, threatening that disconnecting the video call would lead to their arrest by the local police. However, the WhatsApp video call disconnected due to a technical network glitch around Thursday noon, following which the elderly couple informed the matter to one of their well wishers, who forthwith alerted the Vuyyuru police," Vuyyuru CI TVV Rama Rao told TOI."Upon receiving the alert, I informed my senior officers and rushed to the couple's residence. Noticing the ongoing video call, I made an attempt to interact with the person claiming to be a Mumbai crime branch SP. The impostor, upon seeing uniformed police personnel on screen, immediately disconnected the call and went offline," the CI further added.Rao said this was the first such incident in the country wherein the police directly intervened and prevented victims from falling prey in an ongoing digital arrest attempt. A video related to the incident was going viral on social media.