Ahmedabad: An 87-year-old man from the city's Navrangpura area on Thursday filed a complaint with Cybercrime police, alleging that cyber fraudsters posing as central agency officers and Chief Justice of India (CJI) kept him under digital arrest for around two days and cheated him of Rs 23.80 lakh.
The complainant stated in his FIR that on the afternoon of Nov 11, he received a call from a man posing as an officer from the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI), telling him that his phone service would be discontinued as he had been named in a multi-crore scam. The first accused then immediately transferred the call to another man introduced as "CBI officer Anil Deshpande". This man accused the complainant of being involved in the money-laundering case in which the Jet Airways founder Naresh Goyal is an accused.
When the complainant said he didn't know who Goyal was, he was told that it had been found that the complainant had spoken with the airline founder for 45 minutes on phone and that the CJI himself would be hearing the case.
On the evening of Oct 12, the complainant received a group video call on WhatsApp in which three others had already joined. The complainant said that the third accused, posing as the CJI, began hearing the case, and the fourth accused, who introduced himself as lawyer Rahul Gupta, argued for the prosecution.
After the "hearing", the third accused who called himself the CJI, issued an arrest warrant against the complainant. The fourth accused then called up the complainant saying he would not be arrested if he "cooperated with the investigation".
Scared, the complainant shared all his bank details after the accused told him that his money needed to be verified. After sharing his bank account, PPF and fixed deposit details with Gupta, the complainant found that Rs 23.80 lakh — his entire life's savings — had been taken away in five transactions. He then called up the Cybercrime helpline and registered his complaint. Cybercrime police have filed a complaint of extortion and criminal conspiracy under the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita and the Information Technology Act against the unknown accused.