An elderly Calcuttan was kept under “digital arrest” for more than a week and forced to transfer ₹1.09 crore from his retirement funds, police said.
Two teenagers and a youth were arrested from Odisha by Bidhannagar police on Sunday for their involvement in the fraud.
On July 7, Subhendu Goswami of Dum Dum Park received a call where the caller said he was an official of the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India and that TRAI had come across a mobile number issued using his Aadhaar card that had been used for illegal activities.
“When the complainant said that the mentioned mobile number did not belong to him, the caller transferred the call to another man who introduced himself as an officer of Mumbai Police. This man told the complainant that his name had emerged in a fraud case and he would be put under arrest,” said an officer.
Goswami,68, was threatened that his matter was being taken up for hearing in the Supreme Court for which he needed to submit the court fees. “Between July 10 and July 16, he was allegedly made to transfer ₹1.09 crore to various accounts as ‘court fees’,” he said.
“He realised he was duped when he was asked to take a gold loan against his wife’s jewellery and found the website link shared to be fake.”
Goswami lodged a complaint following which the police started to analyse the numbers from where the calls were made. By tracking the IMEI number of the device from where the calls were made, the cops zeroed in on the location of the accused.
A team of officers raided parts of Odisha and arrested Akash Kumar Nath, 19, Nilkantha Nayak, 19, and Manoranjan Parida, 26. They were brought to Calcutta on transit remand.
The trio were produced before a Bidhannagar court on Monday.