Kolkata: The anti-bank fraud section of Kolkata Police’s detective department has arrested two persons from Surat in Gujarat who impersonating cops—from the Mumbai Police crime branch or Gujarat Police ATS or the Narcotics Bureau—and extorted money from residents of Kolkata, falsely accusing them of being involved in drug smuggling.
The accused, Mahiya Balbantbai (33) and Harish Kumar Mehta (23), would call up their targets, introduce themselves as police officers and tell them they had intercepted a parcel, which had contraband in it, in the person’s name, police said.Preying on their targets’ trust in police and their fear of social humiliation, the accused would offer to “settle” the matter in exchange for money, police added. The accused are also suspected to have targeted parents of youngsters studying outside. Balbantbai and Mehta could be traced through the money trail despite the two dividing the money into different wallets.
Police said the arrests followed a complaint from a trader in central Kolkata, who had received a call on Feb 13 and the cyber frauds introduced themselves as delivery agents. The caller had claimed a parcel had arrived from Taiwan in the businessman’s name with several government ID cards and that the Mumbai crime branch wanted to speak to him, the complaint said.
Police on Tuesday issued fresh warnings on social media, urging people not to respond to calls regarding illegal courier consignments.
An alert from the Centre through Cert-IN, the country’s official cyber security organization, also led Kolkata Police to issue an advisory against a Trojan software that lured people to submit their bank details for supposed income tax clearance.