Woman from Mumbai loses Rs 60 lakh in cash in ‘digital arrest’ case

Mumbai: Fraudsters posing as police personnel recently forced a 58-year-old woman to sell her property purportedly "to clear her late husband's loans" and cheated her of Rs 60 lakh by carrying out a ‘digital arrest.' The govt has repeatedly said there is no such thing as ‘digital arrest.' However, not only did the fraudsters say that a bank account linked to her Aadhaar card was linked to a money laundering case, they sent their accomplices close to the woman's residence in the western suburbs to collect Rs 35 lakh and Rs 25 lakh in cash respectively.In ‘digital arrest' cases, the accused usually ask victims to transfer money via bank accounts, but in this case the accused took cash by sending in their aides.It was when the "police personnel" stopped taking her calls that the woman realised she had been cheated of Rs 60 lakh.A police officer said the woman, who complained to the police, was also told by the accused that she was subject to a "digital inquiry." The complainant's husband passed away in April last year. He had taken a loan of Rs one crore from various banks for his business, and the family currently pays Rs 1.1 lakh as monthly EMI. A month after the husband's death, the complainant received a video call from an unidentified person, who said he was a Delhi police officer. He told her an account using her Aadhaar card had been opened in a bank and it was linked to a money laundering case of Rs 1.5 crore.The fake cop threatened the woman with arrest and inquired about her bank details. When the woman asked why the case was in Delhi while she lived in Mumbai, the caller immediately transferred the call to a fake Mumbai DCP in western Mumbai.According to the FIR, the person posing as DCP asked the complainant to pay off all her debts, saying it would help her to clear herself in the police case. For that, he obtained the 7/12 extract of her land outside Mumbai, sent her its photo and asked her to sell the property. But as the complainant was not getting a buyer, she could not arrange the money. The fake DCP then demanded money, and she sold her gold and arranged for Rs 35 lakh.The accused told her one of his men would come to a bus stop close to her building to collect the money. She said in her complaint, "He also sent me the photo of the person who was going to collect the money, without his face, from the neck down, on my mobile phone and asked me to give the money to him." The woman went near the bus stop and soon the accused's accomplice came there, took the money and left.On Feb 6 again, she got Rs 25 lakh by selling more of her gold. The fake DCP again sent a man by first sending her on WhatsApp the man's faceless photo. The accomplice arrived below her building at 6.35 am one day, took the money and left. After that, she asked the accused repeatedly to clear her loans, but they kept demanding more money from her. Getting suspicious, she lodged an FIR.
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