Two from Noida pose as VIPs on WhatsApp to dupe people, held

DEHRADUN: Dehradun police arrested two men from Noida for creating fake WhatsApp accounts using the credentials of VIPs including judges of Supreme Court and senior officials of Union ministries, on Saturday evening.
According to police, the two accused were identified as Manoj Kumar, 52 and Rajiv Arora, 54, both residents of Noida. The duo allegedly sent messages to senior government officials claiming to be the aforementioned VIPs and then asking them to do certain work for people known to them in lieu of hefty amounts.
Janmejaya Khanduri, senior superintendent of police Dehradun, while addressing the media on the arrests at city police headquarters on Sunday, said that the two were nabbed in the probe of a fraud case registered at city's Kotwali police station on July 8 on an input given by an STF officer.
"As per the input, the two, after creating the fake WhatsApp accounts of the VIPs, were duping people of lakhs on a false promise of getting their work done by the authorities concerned. In one such case, they sent a message to a senior IAS officer of Uttarakhand by creating a fake WhatsApp account of a SC judge. They had asked the officer to complete a work pertaining to a land dispute of a person living in the city," said Khanduri.
The SSP informed that the two had promised to solve the land dispute of the person by claiming to have a clout in the state government. In lieu of that, the person had offered an amount of Rs 50 lakh. "Lured by the hefty amount, the two decided to commit the crime and contacted the IAS officer who smelled a rat and informed the police. The police then tracked down the phone number and found it to be registered in the name of Kumar, one of the two accused. The two were tracked down in Noida and finally arrested on Saturday with the help of local informers," said Khanduri.
He added, "The two confessed to the crime and said they were duping people to make easy money as they didn't have a job and had earlier served jail terms in several other fraud cases. Police while checking their phones also found numbers of several VIPs, which they were using to commit the fraud."