Himachal Pradesh: The cyber cell of Solan police has arrested three residents of Rajasthan for allegedly digitally duping a Parwanoo resident and extorting Rs 18.65 lakh from him under the guise of investigating misuse of Aadhaar card in a money laundering case. The accused, Vinay Paliwal (26), Rahul Taylor (26) and Lokesh Khatik (33), all residents of Udaipur in Rajasthan, were arrested on December 13 by Solan police after securing transit remand from Udaipur. They were produced in court the next evening, Solan SP Gaurav Singh said. The incident dates back to October 8, when a Mumbai resident, currently staying in Sector 3 of Parwanoo, lodged a complaint at the Parwanoo police station. He claimed that he received a call from a man from DHL courier service who introduced himself as Ajit Rao. Rao told the complainant that his Aadhaar card was used to send a parcel to China, which allegedly contained illegal drugs and other suspicious items, and was now in the custody of the Customs Department.
Rao then transferred the call to Vinay Kumar, who posed as a CBI officer and told him that the complainant’s Aadhaar card had been misused in a money laundering case. Kumar told him that the card was used by a person named Naresh Goyal in a Rs 538 crore money laundering operation and it was linked to a Canara Bank manager. He then demanded money for further investigation. Under threat and pressure, the complainant transferred Rs 18.65 lakh in installments to Kumar’s bank account and sent him receipts of the payments. For nearly two weeks, the complainant was digitally arrested, constantly monitored through WhatsApp video calls and instructed to provide information about his daily activities. On October 16, the fraudsters claimed that the case was over and promised to return the money by taking a 10 per cent commission.
However, when the complainant tried to contact them later, he realised that he had been duped. A case was registered in Parwanoo under Section 319 (2) of the BNS. With the help of technical investigation and cyber cell, the police traced and arrested the three accused from Udaipur. The accused have been sent to four-day police custody. The police are also investigating the previous criminal records of the accused and found that this fraud network has been operating in Rajasthan and Gujarat for a long time. This network particularly targets residents of Himachal Pradesh and other states and dupes the victims and extracts money. The stolen money was deposited in benami bank accounts and further investigation revealed that about Rs 40 lakh was transferred to these accounts. Apart from this, the kingpin of the network is suspected to have duped up to Rs 3 crore through cryptocurrency exchange. The investigation is ongoing and the amount defrauded may increase as the investigation progresses.
