Mumbai: MBA graduate turns e-sleuth to track man who duped her of Rs 75,000

MUMBAI: An MBA graduate turned into a detective to track down a fraudster who had duped her of Rs 75,000 as Mumbai police were not making progress in the case.
Sneha Sharma (24) largely used social media and web search engines to find out information on the fraudster as well as two men who aided him. She handed over all the data to the police, after which an arrest was made. “It was my hard-earned money that I had made emceeing shows along with my studies. I had to get it back,” Sharma told TOI.
In July 2019, Sharma was looking to rent a flat and saw a post on OLX for a 2BHK in Andheri. She contacted the seller over phone and visited the place. The apartment keys were kept with the watchman as the seller wasn’t in town. When she liked the house, the seller got her to pay Rs 75,000 in instalments over few days. He stopped responding thereafter and she gathered he wasn’t the owner at all and lodged a police complaint.
Days turned into months but police could not find him. Sharma then decided to investigate on her own. The caller had given her two bank account numbers to deposit money. She visited both banks and sought help on social media. “The manager of one of the branches was helpful. I discovered one of the accounts belonged to Pawan Agarwal and his picture was available with the bank. The other belonged to Ravi Yadav,” said Sharma. Both had forwarded her money to the prime accused for a commission.
With Agarwal’s photo on her, Sharma keyed in his name on Facebook. A profile matching his picture popped up. It turned out that Agarwal was a government servant in Gwalior. Through JustDial, Sharma got his office address and phone number. “I had Ravi Yadav’s phone number from bank records. On keying his number into Google, I found a JustDial entry which said he had a travel agency in Gwalior.”
The two Gwalior men had forwarded her money to the prime accused through a digital wallet. Having gone through their bank records, Sharma had the tracking number issued by the digital wallet service. “A friend explained a part of the tracking number is the receiver’s mobile number. I keyed the number on Google and found a match.”
The number belonged to Harish Batham, a Madhya Pradesh resident. A copy of a bail plea filed by him before the MP high court in another case popped up. From the document, Sharma got his address. She and her friends created alternate IDs on Facebook to chat with Batham, Agarwal and Yadav to obtain more data. But after a while, Batham stopped chatting. She handed the data to Mumbai police who found Batham had been arrested by Navi Mumbai police in a separate case. He was then booked in the case filed by Sharma.