Representative image showing a police officer.
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Indore: In the latest case of "digital arrest" fraud in Indore, a gang of cyber thugs trapped a retired professor and duped him of Rs 33 lakh, police on Tuesday said.
However, the police moved quickly after receiving a complaint from the victim and managed to block and retrieve Rs 26.45 lakh of the lost money, an official said.
Additional Deputy Commissioner of Police Rajesh Dandotia said a member of the gang made a video call to the retired professor residing in the city and introduced himself as an officer of the Delhi Police's Cyber Crime Branch.
The fraudster told the victim his Aadhaar card has been found linked to bank accounts which have been used to launder crores of rupees. The scammer threatened the elderly man with arrest and subjected him to interrogation while giving different instructions, Dandotia informed.
The additional deputy commissioner of police said the retired professor got scared during the interrogation and kept following the instructions of the fraudster and transferred Rs 33 lakh to different bank accounts mentioned by him.
Dandotiya said, "On the complaint of the victim, the police acted quickly and salvaged Rs 26.45 lakh and returned it to him. With this money, he got his liver transplant done in Pune." The additional deputy commissioner said transactions from 49 bank accounts used in cheating the retired professor have been blocked and efforts were on to retrieve the remaining amount.
"Digital arrest" is a method of cyber fraud. In such cases, thugs threaten people by posing as law enforcement officers through audio or video calls and digitally hold them hostage in the name of interrogation.