A Rajarhat resident was cheated of ₹1.04 crore after fraudsters threatened to arrest him for sending obscene text messages to a woman — messages he never sent. Police have arrested three men from Karnataka in connection with the case of “digital arrest” scam.

Complainant Sunith Kumar Ray approached the police in September, reporting that he had been contacted by men posing as police officers, threatening to arrest him for harassment of a woman through obscene texts.

“Although the complainant had never committed any offence, the fraudsters convinced him that his name had surfaced in one such case as well as in a human trafficking case, and that he could avoid arrest only by transferring large sums of money,” said an officer of Bidhannagar city police.

Before Durga Puja, Ray transferred ₹1.04 crore to multiple bank accounts, believing he was avoiding arrest. When he realised it was a scam, he reported the matter to Narayanpur police station under the Bidhannagar Police Commissionerate.

The police traced the money trail to two men in Karnataka: Naveen R, 35, and Indradhanush J, 33, both from Mysore. The duo were arrested last week, brought to Calcutta on transit remand.

A Barrackpore court sent the two arrested to a 10-day police remand.

Last Saturday, a third person, alleged to have directly benefited from the siphoned funds, was arrested in Bengaluru. Santosh Prabhu, co-owner of SPSG Global Compassion Enterprises, was implicated after the police discovered that ₹36 lakh of the defrauded money had been transferred to his company.

The police described the case as a “classical case” of digital arrest scam, where an innocent individual is falsely portrayed as a criminal and pressured to pay large sums to avoid arrest.