‘CBI sleuths' con elderly doctor of Rs1.2cr, 2 held
Trichy: Cyber crime police arrested two people from Trichy for posing as CBI officers and swindling more than a crore of rupees from an 82-year-old doctor from Tiruvarur district.
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Police said the group got the elderly man to part with his money claiming they were arresting him digitally for 'illegal activities.'
The doctor, Dr Meera Hussain, was running a clinic in his native place, Muthupet. He told police that he received video calls a few weeks ago from a group of people claiming to be CBI officials. They told him that they have found him indulging in several illegal activities, and hence were arresting him 'digitally.'
The group threatened to visit him in person and arrest him unless he made a transaction of a huge sum. The doctor panicked and sent around Rs1.19 crore in two transactions. When the fraudsters called the doctor and pressed him again for a larger amount, he learnt that he was being deceived, and refused. He filed a complaint with the cyber crime police on Thursday.
The cyber sleuths sprang into action, traced the doctor's recent calls and searched for the source.
Unlike in many other scams, they found that the fraudsters were in nearby Trichy. On Saturday, they arrested two people named Jahir Hussain, 25, and Benedict Raj, 27.
The accused were booked under BNS 316(2) for criminal breach of trust, 318(3) for cheating and under section 66D of the Information Technology (Amendment) Act for cheating by personation using a computer resource.
They were produced in a court in Tiruvarur which remanded them at Nagapattinam district jail in judicial custody.
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Police suspect that the group is involved in more such scams.
"The case is under investigation. We are still learning about the modes of operation of the perpetrators and examining the loopholes they exploited. More details will be disclosed later after a thorough probe," Tiruvarur SP Garad Karun told TOI.
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