Amritsar man loses Rs 5.5L to online fraudsters

PK Jaiswar

Tribune News Service

Amritsar, November 1

Are bank websites safe? Well, the answer seems no. Bhupinder Singh, a resident of Loharka Road, learnt it the hard way. He lost Rs5.50 lakh of his hard-earned money to online fraudsters.

Bhupinder Singh approached Police Commissioner Dr Sukhchain Singh Gill for the registration of case and to seek justice.

I had an FD worth Rs5 lakh at a private bank on the Mall Road. On October 18, I decided to start another FD worth Rs50,000. To know the current rate of interest, I called on a number given on the bank’s website. The person on the other side asked me to fill a form online. After completing half of the form, I got suspicious and immediately disconnected the call. After a few minutes, Rs5,000 got debited from my account. Soon my registered mobile number with the bank changed and a new number was added and net banking started on the said number without any verification. The fraudsters got the amount of my FD transferred on their account and from there it was transferred to another unknown account. Bhupinder Singh, a resident of Loharka Road

The Police Commissioner has forwarded the complaint to the cyber crime cell for further investigations.

The victim said he had a Fixed Deposit (FD) worth Rs5 lakh at a private bank on the Mall Road. He said on October 18, he decided to start another FD worth Rs50,000 in the bank. He said for knowing the current rate of interest on FDs, he called on a number given on the bank website. He said the person on the other side asked him to fill a form online.

“After completing half of the form, I got suspicious and immediately disconnected the call,” he said, adding that the person called from another mobile and asked him to complete the form and threatened that the entire amount would be transferred to the government if he did not fill the form. He said he again refused and disconnected the phone.

He said after a few minutes, Rs5,000 got debited from his account and he got a call saying that slowly, the entire would be transferred soon. He said soon his registered mobile number with the bank changed and a new number was added and net banking started on the said number without any verification. He said the fraudsters got the amount of his FD transferred on their account and from there it was transferred to another unknown account.

He said as the process was on, he immediately rushed to the bank and requested the officials to freeze the amount.

“At that time, my account still had Rs1.76 lakh. The bank took the complaint and the authorities said the process has been initiated and the account would be frozen. They assured him that the remaining amount would not be debited. But astonishingly, I also lost that amount and my account got nil,” he rued.

Ironically, online frauds are on the rise and the police authorities remain limited only to registration of an FIR after months of probe.

“The common man is no VVIP. It took just a couple of days for the Punjab Police to crack the case of Congress MP and former Chief Minister Capt Amarinder Singh’s wife Parneet Kaur and nab the culprits,” said Sarabjit Singh, an advocate and senior activist of Punjab Human Rights Organisation. It is an irony that the Punjab Police had nothing to show in the name of arrests in online frauds.