Ahmedabad senior citizen duped of ₹3 lakh in ‘digital arrest’ scam

A 75-year-old man from Maninagar has lodged a complaint alleging that he was cheated of ₹3 lakh by fraudsters posing as Mumbai Police officials, who threatened him with digital arrest in a fabricated money laundering case.

Prakash Joshi, a resident of Jawahar Chowk, in his complaint to Maninagar police stated that he received repeated phone calls from unknown numbers from September 2. The callers introduced themselves as police personnel from Colaba Police Station in Mumbai, and claimed that a money laundering case had been registered against him.

Joshi told the police that the fraudsters kept him engaged in long conversations and later sent WhatsApp messages, including photographs of an alleged accused, to convince him that he was under investigation. One of the callers, who identified herself as 'IPS officer Aarti Singh', even spoke to him over a video call, warning that the police would arrest him if he did not comply.

On September 6, Joshi was instructed to transfer ₹3 lakh to an account in the name of Santosh Kumar at UCO Bank, with the assurance that the money would clear his name. He made the payment through RTGS from his SBI Maninagar branch. The fraudsters then began pressuring him to deposit an additional ₹7 lakh.

Joshi told police that he attempted to withdraw money from his PPF account to arrange the funds, but when bank officials grew suspicious of his repeated requests, they enquired further. After which, the branch manager alerted the police and guided him through the process of registering a complaint. His family also called the national cybercrime helpline 1930, through which an acknowledgement number was generated.

Police said the case has been registered under relevant sections of cheating and criminal intimidation, and further investigation is on.