New Delhi: On Friday, a 53-year-old social activist from the Delhi-National Capital Region (NCR) allegedly got a call about a courier waiting for her. What followed were gruelling two-hour calls, during which she claimed she was coaxed, cajoled and even threatened by people posing as police and Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) officers — including someone allegedly pretending to be its former CBI chief Subodh Jaiswal — in an elaborate “ruse” to swindle her.
The activist, who doesn’t want to be named, has registered a complaint on the National Cyber Crime Reporting Portal — a centralised portal for registering cyber crime cases — for alleged attempted cyber extortion. ThePrint has a copy of the complaint, filed Friday.
In the complaint the woman says she received a purported automated call that afternoon, claiming to be from a courier company and informing her of a package in her name.
“At the back of my mind, I thought it was a credit card and since I would be traveling to London in two days, I wanted it as soon as possible,” she told ThePrint later. “The automated call asked me to key in a number to speak to an executive and that’s where things got murky.”
The supposed “executive” who answered then told her details of the alleged delivery — a package containing tiger skins, an illegal trade item, with her delivery address. The caller allegedly told her the package was from Malaysia, had been impounded by customs officers at the Mumbai airport and was being held at an address in Andheri East.
Soon, the call got scarier as the threats steadily grew in intensity — according to the woman, several people jumped in on the call and even told her it was a “national security issue” and that they would have to “involve” the country’s intelligence bureau. The bid only failed because she asked “too many questions”, she claimed.
As is the procedure for complaints registered on the National Cyber Crime Reporting Portal, her complaint has been transferred to the “nearest cyber cell, under whose jurisdiction her area comes, for investigation”. Police sources told ThePrint “probe in on” in the matter.
News reports suggest, however, that this is not an isolated case.
Police across the country have been reportedly grappling with complaints of fake KYC, bank and loan recovery scams, and even sextortion — the practice of extorting money from someone by threatening to reveal evidence of their sexual activity.
In September 2021, for instance, a Gurugram-based lawyer reportedly fell prey to a sextortion scam when a woman allegedly undressed while making a videocall to him and eventually used screenshots from it to blackmail him. The woman was eventually booked in the case.
“The modus operandi varies but the motive remains the same — to extort money. They mostly don’t know whom they are targeting and it all depends on how the call goes. Soft targets are then identified,” Delhi’s Special CP (Special Cell) H.G.S Dhaliwal told ThePrint.
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‘Tiger skin’ to ‘national security’ — what the callers said
According to the social activist, in the present case, the first person to interact with her — the supposed courier company executive — asked her to speak to someone in the Mumbai Police. This new caller, whom she identifies in her police complaint as someone who introduced himself as Ram Mohan from Mumbai’s Marine Drive police station, allegedly asked her to download the once-popular video call app Skype. The request surprised her “because no one really uses Skype anymore”, she told ThePrint later.
Eventually, the caller allegedly began questioning her, repeatedly asking if she knew a person called Vipul Singh and even began allegedly threatening her with the Intelligence Bureau’s involvement in the case.
“I was told that I cannot talk to anyone. They even saw me chatting on WhatsApp Web and told me that it’s a matter of national security,” she told ThePrint. “They said there is a First Information Report (FIR) against me and this is part of an investigation of money laundering involving crores and some 24 families. I was shown a badge and some Supreme Court documents. All of this scared me,” she alleged.
She added that when she demanded that she be allowed to speak to someone senior, a man allegedly impersonating former Mumbai police commissioner and ex-CBI director Subodh Jaiswal joined the call, she claimed.
“(He) told me to come to Bombay and (said) that I can’t fly out of the country. I was asked to cancel my tickets (to London) and to reach Mumbai the same day. The argument went on for a while, with them threatening that they will come down to Delhi to escort me to Bombay to which I asked them to come to the nearest police station,” she said, adding she was told to pay Rs 50,000 as surety.
Her “interrogators” also repeatedly asked about her bank accounts and how much money she had in them.
“I started getting irritated with the whole conversation and when I came across as assertive, they backed off,” the woman claimed, adding that eventually, she and some family members tried calling the numbers through which the calls were made but found they were switched off.
The case, which is currently being investigated by her local cyber cell, appears to be far from unique. Delhi Special CP (Special Cell) H.G.S Dhaliwal told ThePrint that those making such calls frequently “impersonate government officials in order to intimidate”.
“We would request the public to not click on links and not share their identity details to anyone calling and asking for it,” he said. “If any such calls are received by anyone, they must immediately inform the police. Various police teams are working on these cases to identify these fraudsters.”
Delhi Police, he said, had several cyber awareness programmes for citizens.
“Regular ads are also shown. Students are being trained as cyber warriors. Modern tools are deployed to tackle these cases and specialised training is provided to police personnel dealing with these cases,” the officer added.
(Edited by Uttara Ramaswamy)
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