Rajkot: A 29-year-old combat engineer with the Army, currently posted in Bhuj, fell victim to cyberfraud, losing Rs 15.5 lakh after being lured by the promise of a heavy subsidy on a loan from the Army Group Insurance Fund. While the victim was disbursed the loan, he was duped into depositing it into accounts controlled by the scammers. The victim, originally from Madhya Pradesh who has been serving in Bhuj for four years, filed a complaint at the Border Range Cyber Crime police station in Bhuj, against one Sagar Guleria under Section 318(4) of the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita (BNS).The deception began when the complainant saw a message in an Army group chat from an acquaintance offering assistance with Army-related loans. Intrigued, the victim contacted the acquaintance, who provided a phone number, claiming the person on the other end had facilitated such loans before.On calling the number, the man at the other end introduced himself as Sagar Guleria. Guleria claimed to have helped many soldiers secure loans with significant subsidies, offering a seemingly irresistible deal: a Rs 15 lakh loan with a Rs 13 lakh subsidy, meaning the recipient would only have to repay Rs 2 lakh.The complainant shared various personal documents, including salary slips, photographs and ID cards, with Guleria. Soon, a sum exceeding Rs 16,15,000 was deposited in the complainant’s bank account.The scam was set in motion with the deposit. Guleria instructed the complainant to transfer the entire loan amount to an “Army Group Insurance account” with the false promise that the full subsidized amount would be redeposited into their account later.Following Guleria’s instructions, the victim transferred Rs 15.50 lakh from their account in four transactions. When the promised redeposit failed to materialize, the complainant contacted the original acquaintance, who revealed that they too had fallen victim to the same cyberfraud.
