The fraudsters are still at large and have been harassing my mother by calling her multiple times and sending messages and e-mails, the victim’s daughter said.
| Photo Credit: Image for representation

A 75-year-old woman in south Delhi was not only subjected to a “digital arrest”, but the scamsters went a step further: they showed up at her doorstep and forced her to pawn her gold jewellery and sell her only home. Vibha (name changed), who lives alone in Vasant Kunj, received a call on her landline on April 6 claiming she was linked to a money laundering case. What followed was a month-long ordeal involving the transfer of money, gold and property, along with severe mental and physical trauma.

The callers forced her to share her WhatsApp number. “On a video call, uniformed men claiming to be from the Central Bureau of Investigation, sitting inside a police station, told me I had to be under arrest, or my children would be brought back to India within minutes,” Vibha said.

Vibha, a breast cancer patient, is only in touch with her daughter Radhika, who lives in the Netherlands. “They said the Enforcement Directorate (ED) would arrest my children and they would not get bail. This scared me so much that I agreed to do whatever they asked,” she said.

The scamsters then told her that to get a “clearance from ED”, she had to deposit all her money, jewellery and property with them.

From April 6 to 27, she remained under constant video surveillance. During this period, she was forced to transfer ₹3 lakh, take a gold loan of about ₹5 lakh by pawning jewellery weighing 83.5 grams (worth about ₹12 lakh), and sell her Vasant Kunj house, worth over ₹2 crore. The money received from the loan and the property sale was immediately siphoned off to the scamsters’ accounts. 

“On April 7, while returning from Muthoot FinCorp Limited after pawning my jewellery, I was in severe distress. I fell on the steps of my house and injured my knee. I started crying and told them, ‘You may kill me if you have to, but I cannot do this anymore’,” she said.

Beyond digital arrest

The scamsters then told her that a property dealer would visit her house to help complete the sale. On April 13, a man identifying himself as Sushant Kumar arrived and took her documents. Two days later, he returned with two others — one posing as the buyer and another as a witness. The property was sold for ₹2.40 crore, and the buyer, Anil Kapoor, gave her a cheque of ₹24 lakh as an initial payment.

The video surveillance continued throughout.

“Sushant Kumar, who was also in touch with the scamsters over the phone, took the cheque to the bank himself and deposited it into an account linked to an educational society,” Vibha said, adding that he also showed her a receipt purportedly from the ED acknowledging the amount. 

Vibha kept waiting for the promised “clearance”, but when she did not hear back until April 27, she asked Sushant to accompany her to the police station to file a complaint. “Even there, the scamsters called and spoke to the SHO,” she said, adding that Sushant did not disclose his name in the complaint.

While the video surveillance ended after this, Sushant continued to call and harass her, demanding ₹48 lakh as ransom to return the property papers.

Mental and physical trauma

“This is not just cybercrime but also a crime against a woman. An elderly woman was surveilled 24/7 for 21 days. Men came to her house and forced her to sell her property. She has lost all her life’s savings,” said Radhika.

The investigation officer in the case said the police are examining electronic records. “The money was siphoned off through multiple transactions across three banks. Notice has been sent to the property dealer, who will be examined soon,” he said.

“Digital arrest cases are evolving, with scamsters involving local property dealers, finance and bank employees who approach victims, usually elderly women, and pressure them to settle, often demanding double the amount,” said Kush Sharma, an advocate who has filed an application before a Delhi court seeking a court-monitored investigation on behalf of Vibha. The matter will be heard next month.

Published – June 11, 2026 01:27 am IST

Bengaluru:

Within five hours while sitting at home in India, retired professor Kamta Prasad Singh handed over his hard-earned savings to online fraudsters impersonating police. The cybercrime known as “digital arrest” — where fraudsters pose online as law enforcement officials and order people to transfer huge amounts of money — has become so rampant that Prime Minister Narendra Modi has issued warnings.

Singh told AFP that money was his life savings.

“Over the years, I have skipped having tea outside, walked to avoid spending on public transport,” the 62-year-old said, his voice breaking.

“Only I know how I saved my money.”

Police say scammers have exploited the vast gap between the breakneck speed of India’s data digitalisation, from personal details to online banking, and the lagging awareness of many of basic internet safety.

Fraudsters are using technology for data breaches, targeting information their victims believe is only available to government authorities, and making otherwise unlikely demands appear credible.

Indians have emptied their bank accounts “out of sheer fear”, PM Modi said in an October radio broadcast, adding fraudsters “create so much psychological pressure on the victim”.

‘Ruined’

Mobile phones, and especially video calling, have allowed fraudsters to reach straight into people’s homes.

India runs the world’s largest biometric digital identity programme — called “Aadhaar”, or foundation in Hindi — a unique card issued to India’s more than one billion people, and increasingly required for financial transactions.

Scammers often claim they are police investigating questionable payments, quoting their target’s Aadhaar number to appear genuine. They then request their victim make a “temporary” bank transfer to validate their accounts, before stealing the cash.

Singh, from India’s eastern state of Bihar, said the web of lies began when he received a call in December, seemingly from the telecom regulatory authority.

“They said… police were on their way to arrest me,” Singh said.

The fraudsters told Singh that his Aadhaar ID was being misused for illegal payments.

Terrified, Singh agreed to prove he had control of his bank account, and after spiralling threats, transferred over $16,100 (Rs 13,92,532).

“I have lost sleep, don’t feel like eating,” he said. “I have been ruined.”

‘Rot in proverbial hell’

The surge of online scams is worrying because of “how valid they make it look and sound”, said police officer Sushil Kumar, who handled cybercrimes for half a decade. The perpetrators range from school dropouts to highly educated individuals.

“They know what to search for on the internet to find out basic details of how government agencies work,” Kumar added.

India registered 17,470 cybercrimes in 2022, including 6,491 cases of online bank fraud, according to the latest government data.

Tricks vary. Kaveri, 71, told AFP her story on condition her name was changed.

She said fraudsters posed as officials from the US courier FedEx, claiming she had sent a package containing drugs, passports and credit cards.

They offered her full name and Aadhaar ID details as “proof”, followed by well-forged letters from the Central Bank of India and Central Bureau of Investigation, the country’s top investigative agency.

“They wanted me to send money, which would be returned in 30 minutes,” she said, adding she was convinced when they sent a “properly signed letter”.

She transferred savings from a house sale totalling around $120,000 in four instalments over six days before the fraudsters vanished.

Kaveri says those days felt “like a tunnel”.

Meeta, 35, a private health professional from Bengaluru who also did not want to be identified, was conned by fake police via a video call.

“It seemed like a proper police station, with walkie-talkie noises,” she said.

The scammers told her to prove she controlled her bank account by taking out a 200,000 rupee ($2,300) loan via her bank’s phone app, before demanding she make a “temporary” transfer.

Despite making it clear to the bank that she had been scammed, Meeta continues to be asked to pay back the loan.

“My trust in banks has mostly gone,” she said, before cursing the thieves.

“I hope they rot in proverbial hell.”

(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)

New Delhi:

The Indian Cyber Crime Coordination Centre (I4C), a wing of the Ministry of Home Affairs, has identified and blocked more than 1,700 Skype IDs and 59,000 WhatsApp accounts used for digital fraud, Lok Sabha was informed on Tuesday.

Union Minister of State for Home Affairs Bandi Sanjay Kumar also stated that the ‘Citizen Financial Cyber Fraud Reporting and Management System,’ launched under I4C in 2021, enables immediate reporting of financial frauds to prevent the siphoning off of funds by fraudsters and so far, over Rs 3,431 crore has been saved in more than 9.94 lakh complaints.

“The I4C has pro-actively identified and blocked more than 1,700 Skype IDs and 59,000 WhatsApp accounts used for digital fraud,” Kumar said in response to a written question.

As of November 15, 2024, more than 6.69 lakh SIM cards and 1.32 lakh IMEIs, as reported by police authorities, have been blocked by the government.

The minister further explained that to strengthen the mechanism for addressing cyber crimes, including digital fraud, the central government and Telecom Service Providers (TSPs) have developed a system to identify and block incoming international spoofed calls that display Indian mobile numbers, making them appear as though they originate within India.

Kumar noted that such spoofed calls have been used by cyber criminals in recent cases of fake digital arrests, FedEx scams, and impersonation as government or police officials.

Directions have been issued to TSPs to block such incoming international spoofed calls. Additionally, a State-of-the-Art Cyber Fraud Mitigation Centre (CFMC) has been established at I4C, where representatives from major banks, financial institutions, payment aggregators, TSPs, IT intermediaries, and law enforcement agencies from States and UTs collaborate to ensure immediate action and seamless cooperation in tackling cybercrime.

The minister said a suspect registry of identifiers of cyber criminals has been launched by I4C on September 10, 2024 in collaboration with banks and financial institutions and has introduced a new feature ‘Report and Check Suspect’ on the portal cybercrime.gov.in.

This facility provides citizens a search option to search I4C’s repository of identifiers of cyber criminals through ‘suspect search’.

(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)

New Delhi:

A 90-year-old Gujarat man was duped of over Rs 1 crore by fraudsters posing as Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) officers. The conmen placed the senior citizen under a “digital arrest”, claiming the old man was involved in drug trafficking and money laundering.

According to the Surat Crime Branch, five individuals have been arrested in connection with the scam, which reportedly had ties to an international gang operating out of China.

The mastermind, Parth Gopani, is suspected to be hiding in Cambodia.

What Is Digital Arrest?

“Digital arrests” do not exist under Indian law, clarified Yashasvi Yadav, Special Inspector General of Police for Maharashtra Cyber Department. “Digital arrests are one of the sophisticated scams that even well-educated people, including officers, fall for,” he told NDTV Profit.

The term refers to a type of cyber fraud where scammers impersonate law enforcement officers or government representatives. They pressure victims into paying large sums of money using psychological tactics and threats over audio or video calls.

Cyber law expert and advocate Pawan Duggal explained, “Digital arrest is the phenomenon of trying to put somebody in a sense of fear and panic and thereafter going ahead and extorting money from the said person under some mistaken notion so as to make the said person a victim of a cybercrime.”

How Digital Arrest Scams Work

• Initiating the Call: Victims are informed they are implicated in crimes like drug trafficking or money laundering. Scammers create a sense of fear of severe consequences, such as jail time.
• Fraudsters use props like fake uniforms, ID cards, and documents. They may even mimic government office settings to appear authentic.
• Victims are asked to keep their cameras and microphones on while being warned against disclosing the situation to anyone.
• Under pressure, victims transfer money to accounts provided by the scammers, believing it to be part of the “investigation” process.

How To Stay Safe

If you receive a call claiming you are under digital arrest, here’s what to do:

• Report the number immediately to law enforcement.
• Verify suspicious calls and credentials using official websites rather than search engines, as scammers often upload fake numbers online.
• Remember that legitimate investigations cannot end with payments. Any such demand should raise a red flag.

If you realise you have fallen victim to such a scam:

• Call the financial helpline 1930 within 15-20 minutes to freeze the transfer.
• File a complaint with your local cybercrime cell.

The Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA) has urged prompt action to counter such scams.

“The Indian Cyber Crime Coordination Centre (I4C) under the Ministry of Home Affairs coordinates activities related to combating cybercrime in the country,” a ministry statement said.

Victims can also visit www.cybercrime.gov.in for assistance.