The Punjab Police on Sunday arrested two persons of an inter-state cybercrime group that duped industrialist Shri Paul Oswal of Rs 7 crore by posing as officers of central agencies, PTI reported.
Ludhiana Police Commissioner Kuldeep Singh Chahal said that Rs 5.2 crore had been recovered from the two persons identified as Atanoo Choudhary and Anand Kumar Choudhary.
Seven other individuals belonging to the group have been identified and efforts were on to arrest them, Chahal was quoted as saying.
The nine persons are from Assam and West Bengal, he said.
The cybercrime group withdrew Rs 7 crore from bank accounts belonging to Oswal, the owner of the Vardhman Group.
One of the accused had introduced himself as an officer of the Central Bureau of Investigation and had shown Oswal an arrest warrant, which was fake.
According to The Indian Express, the police said that the accused had threatened Oswal with arrest warrants claiming to have been issued by the Enforcement Directorate. They also showed Oswal a Supreme Court order, which was fake, directing the industrialist to “release Rs 7 crore into a Secret Supervision Account” in late August.
The accused had claimed that Oswal was involved in a money-laundering case related to Jet Airways founder Naresh Goyal, the newspaper reported. Goyal was arrested by the Enforcement Directorate in September 2023.
They held a “fake Supreme Court hearing via Skype call” and the “case was heard by someone who impersonated the chief justice of the country Justice DY Chandrachud”, the newspaper reported, citing the first information report.
Oswal told The Indian Express that the accused had “kept me under digital surveillance for two long days, including in the night” while sleeping. “Posing as CBI officers, they instructed me to keep the Skype in my phone on even during sleep and someone from the other side used to watch over me for the whole night,” he said.
The police filed a case following a complaint by Oswal.
Last week, businessperson Rajnish Ahuja was also duped of Rs 1.01 crore by fraudsters who had posed as Central Bureau of Investigation officers, the Hindustan Times reported. He had been threatened with arrest after claiming that an extortion amount had been transferred to his bank account, PTI reported.
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