A 70-year-old retired government employee in South Dinajpur district was fleeced off ₹6.5 lakh of his savings by cybercriminals over the past one month.

The senior citizen on Sunday filed a complaint at the cybercrime police station in Balurghat and the police have initiated a probe.

Sources said that around one month ago, the person got a video call from an unknown number. He picked up the call to find that a young woman was speaking to him.

After a few days, he got a video call where his photo was morphed with the
woman’s photo.

The woman then called and demanded money from him, threatening him that she would post his morphed photos on social media if he did not comply.

“The elderly man was initially reluctant to pay her the money. This made the woman’s aides take up the strategy of impersonating police officers and making calls to him. He was told that the woman in question had attempted suicide and was under treatment at a hospital in Delhi,” said a police source.

“They asked him to pay money for the woman’s treatment to evade arrest. This left him intimidated and he paid around ₹6.5 lakh in phases to the callers,” the
source added.

As the callers insisted on more money, the person, who stays in a place under the Hili police station of the district, divulged it to his wife.

His wife realised that he had been conned. She persuaded him to file a complaint with the police. He finally did so on Sunday.

“We are looking into the complaint filed at the cybercrime police station. People should be alert. Time and again, we request people not to walk into the trap of digital fraud and yet cases like these happen,” said Bikram Prasad, the deputy superintendent of police (headquarters) of Balurghat.