Trapped By A Lie: ASHA Worker Lost Rs 4 Lakh And Her Sanity To Lottery Scam

NDTV

16 hours ago

Pushpalata Jharia had only heard of rewards for hard work. As an ASHA worker in the Bargi police station area of Madhya Pradesh's Jabalpur, her days revolved around taking care of villagers' health, managing her two children, and supporting her husband who did odd jobs to keep the family afloat.
But one day, a phone call shattered the life she had built. A promise of diamonds, gold, and a cash prize of ten lakh rupees arrived with a foreign number and a carefully planted lie.
The 36-year-old woman couldn't have known that she had just stepped into a psychological trap that would last for one and a half months - a trap so manipulative that it stripped her of not just Rs 4 lakh, but her own sense of self.
The Call That Changed Everything
It started in March with an unknown number flashing on her phone - a foreign VPN line. A smooth voice on the other side told her she had won a mega lottery. All she had to do was pay a small "processing" fee.
From there, a web of deception began to tighten. One transaction led to another. The fraudsters kept her hooked with constant calls, emotional manipulation, and mounting fear. Soon, they spun a new tale: the courier carrying her lottery prize had been arrested, and her Aadhaar card was found with him. She was next, they warned, unless she sent more money.
Pushed between fear and blind hope, Pushpalata transferred a total of Rs 4 lakh - money she didn't have. Some she borrowed from relatives. Some she begged for. And when the questions started at home, she was told to keep it a secret, or the prize would be cancelled.
She Left Everything Behind
On April 23, Pushpalata went to her maternal home. Three days later, she disappeared - telling her family she was going to Bargi, but instead, she vanished.
A missing person's report was filed on May 4. But what no one expected was that Pushpalata had already begun a long and painful journey across cities - chasing a lie.
From Jabalpur to Mumbai, then Surat, and finally to Delhi - she kept moving, sleeping at railway stations, eating free langar meals, and calling her family only from borrowed phones. She would take odd jobs, collect some money, and send it to her invisible "masters."
The Kidnapping Drama
The conmen weren't done. In June, they made her shoot a video - crying, scared, begging. They sent it to her husband and demanded a ransom of Rs 2 lakh. The threats were brutal: if the money wasn't paid, her body would be chopped into pieces and thrown into the forest.
Her daughter, Poonam said "She got a call in March about some prize. Slowly she started sending money. Then one day, we got a video where she was crying, and it said she'd been kidnapped. We were terrified."
This shook the family to its core. Her mother approached the Madhya Pradesh High Court and filed a habeas corpus petition. On the court's orders, four police teams were deployed.
It was a stolen phone call made from Greater Noida that finally cracked the case. The police traced her and recovered her on a lonely Monday afternoon.
"She Still Believes She'll Get The Reward"
When Pushpalata was found, she was disoriented and weak. According to police, her hands trembled, her body shivered, and her belief that the fraudsters were still "good people" remained firm.
"We are counselling her," said CSP Anjul Mishra of Bargi, who led the investigation. "She's still under the illusion that this was all part of a bigger plan and she will be rewarded in the end."
Her mental state is fragile, and reality is hard to digest for a woman who sacrificed everything chasing a dream that never existed.
Pushpalata's sister-in-law, Asha Jharia, told NDTV: "She kept asking villagers and relatives for money. When we asked why, she said she was helping a relative. Once, she even sent money using my daughter's phone. We begged her to stop - we barely had enough for ourselves."
Police are now tracking the cyber trail. The fraud originated from foreign IP addresses, making the process more complex.
"We received multiple audio messages with horrific abuse," CSP Anjul Mishra said. "The kidnapping video came from a foreign source. The country hosting the IP is not cooperating, making it harder to trace the fraudsters."