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A 73-year-old retired district judge from the Neredmet area of Hyderabad fell prey to a “digital arrest” scam after fraudsters impersonated senior law enforcement officials, including former CBI Additional Director Archana Ramasundaram. The victim was duped of Rs 1.66 crore after being threatened with criminal charges during a series of calls from people claiming to be officials from the Bengaluru police and the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI).
In his complaint submitted to the Cyber Crime Station (CCS) Malkajgiri, the victim stated that he received a call on February 23 from a man claiming to be a senior CBI officer named Deepak Kumar. The caller alleged that the retired judge was using two mobile numbers to make inappropriate calls to women and claimed that an FIR had been registered against him at Indra Nagar Police Station in Bengaluru. He added that the judge’s Aadhaar card had been misused to obtain another mobile number.
The accused and the victim were then joined by another person on the call who claimed to be Circle Inspector Gourav Saradhi. Adding to the earlier allegation, Gourav accused the complainant of being involved in a human trafficking case and claimed that a non-bailable warrant has been issued in his name by the Supreme Court.
“He instructed me to write a letter to the Computer Information Systems (CIS) department stating that my Aadhaar had been misused and warned me not to disclose the matter to anyone, including my family,” the retired judge said in his complaint.
The victim received one final call from a woman named Archana Ramasundaram, who also claimed to be a senior CBI officer. In a video call, the judge was shown a purported Supreme Court letter alleging that he was involved in money laundering, human trafficking, and identity theft. Ironically, retired IPS officer Archana Ramasundaram was with the CBI and scamsters are known to imitate real people to add a layer of believability. In an earlier story by TNM, Cambodian scamsters used artificial intelligence (AI) to resemble real life Indian police officers to transfer money to a fraudulent Reserve Bank of India (RBI) account.
The retired judge said that he was coerced into sharing details of his bank accounts under the pretext of financial assessment and ended up paying the amount asked for by the accused. On later learning that he was in fact cheated, he approached the cyber police.
A case has been registered under Sections 316(2) (criminal breach of trust), 318(4) (cheating), 319(2) (cheating by personation), 338 (forgery of valuable securities, wills, or authority to transfer property), 308(2) (extortion) of the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita (BNS) read with Section 66-C (identity theft) and 66-D (cheating by personation using computer resources) of the Information Technology (IT) Act.