New Delhi: The Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) Friday charged a Siliguri-based trust and its manager for recouping a portion of Rs 22.92 crore duped from a retired Delhi banker on the pretext of keeping him under “digital arrest”.
The manager, identified as Sagnik Roy, was arrested in February by the Delhi Police’s Intelligence Fusion & Strategic Operations (IFSO) unit, before the case— one of the biggest digital arrest case so far involving a significant amount of money—was transferred to the CBI.
A portion of the funds duped from Naresh Malhotra, the retired banker, were routed into the bank accounts of a trust named Securing World Social & Economic Development Council, investigators found.
“Investigation has also uncovered that the same bank account was also used in at least two other cyber fraud cases registered in other places in India. This account was used to receive proceeds of crime, which were subsequently siphoned off through a network of mule accounts,” a source in the CBI said.
Roy attempted to mislead the investigators, claiming that the details related to the bank account, including the ATM card, were stolen and that he had also brought the issue to the notice of the police. However, the intimation about bank account details were given on 12 August last year, a day after transfer of the tranche from the Rs 22.92 crore duped from Malhotra on 11 August, sources in the CBI said.
The case was initially registered by the IFSO in September on a complaint by Malhotra, who alleged that he was held on the pretext of a digital arrest and coerced into paying Rs 22.92 crore in different tranches.
In his complaint, Malhotra said that he was coerced by “law enforcement agencies”, claiming that he received a call stating that his Aadhaar number was used to obtain a mobile number that figured during a probe into a terror case. He was then referred to some people posing as Mumbai Police officers who, over the course of six weeks, coerced him into coughing up Rs 22.92 crore to walk free in the case.
The Delhi Police had lodged a case against unknown suspects under Sections 308 (extortion), 318(4) (cheating and dishonestly inducing delivery of property), 319 (cheating by personation) & 340 (forgery of documents or electronic records) of the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita in September.
In October, the Supreme Court had taken suo motu cognisance of the rising trend of digital arrests and directed the CBI to explore options for taking over cases involving high amounts defrauded from victims.
The CBI had then submitted that it could take over the probe into three cases involving an amount of more than Rs 10 crore. One of the cases was of the retired bank manager. In February, the apex court then ordered the Delhi government to accord sanction for a CBI probe within a week.
(Edited by Tony Rai)
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