UP DGP becomes victim of caller ID spoofing, con hauls up officers

The matter came to light last week when the UP Police found audio clip of the conversation between a police station in-charge and a person who was supposedly the DGP

The Uttar Pradesh Director General of Police DS Chauhan has become a victim of call spoofing trick where an unidentified person posed as DGP and called up the police officials.

The police are now trying to trace the offender.

According to police sources, the unknown caller dialled two police station in-charges under the Kanpur police Commissionerate and collected information about a case while seeking favours.

The police apprehended that the unknown caller had made calls to several other police officers as well as administrative officials, using the same trick.

Read | Americans duped into losing $10 billion by illegal Indian call centres in 2022: Report

The matter came to light last week when the UP Police headquarters found a viral audio clip of the conversation between a police station in-charge and a person who was supposedly the DGP.

Later, it came to light that a fraudster had made this call using the call spoofing trick to pose as the top police officer.

Police officials have secretly started investigation to trace the unknown caller after registration of an FIR of impersonation and Information Technology (IT) Act against an unidentified person with the Hazratganj police station in this connection.

Three teams have been constituted to trace the caller who was misusing the DGP's name.

According to the complaint, the unknown caller sought information about the case while making a call to Sajeti police station in-charge of Kanpur and tried to seek favours for one party.

He said the caller posing as the DGP also used abusive language with the in-charge while pulling him up for not taking action in the case.

Read | CBI busts fake call centre which duped US citizens; recovers gadgets, foreign money

Similarly, the caller dialled the Babupurwa police station in-charge of Kanpur, gave wrong information about an incident and asked to take action against a person.

According to cyber experts, caller ID spoofing is a trick in which a person can use an application in which the receiver's mobile phone will display the caller's number as different than the actual one (i.e the number that the caller had fed in the application).

For example, the receiver's phone will display an official's number if the same is fed in the application even though the call is not made from the official's phone.