Kanpur: A 73-year-old retired teacher was allegedly duped of Rs 25 lakh by cyber fraudsters, who kept him under “digital arrest” for five days after falsely claiming that his Aadhaar card had been found with terrorists arrested in Jammu.The victim, Raghav Ram Yadav, a resident of Dabauli, lodged a complaint at Govind Nagar police station and the cyber police station on Tuesday.Yadav retired from Khalsa Inter College, Govind Nagar, in 2013. According to the complaint, Yadav received a call from an unknown number on April 10. The caller, posing as a superintendent of police, claimed that Yadav’s Aadhaar card had been recovered from terrorists arrested in Jammu and that an arrest warrant had been issued against him. He was also threatened that informing family members would implicate them in the case.The fraudsters allegedly kept him connected on a video call for five days, questioning him about his bank accounts, savings and family members. They told him he had to record his statement before the DGP Headquarters in Lucknow. When he said he could not travel, they asked him to do so online.Yadav said a man dressed in a police uniform then instructed him to deposit a security amount in the name of the Maharashtra Police ATS to obtain a security clearance certificate that would remove his name from the case. The caller allegedly assured him that the money would be refunded with interest after the investigation.Believing the claim, Yadav broke a fixed deposit and transferred Rs 25 lakh through RTGS on April 15 to an IndusInd Bank account after first depositing the amount in a Bank of Baroda account.He said he realised it was a fraud only when the callers pressured him to break another fixed deposit worth Rs 10 lakh. He then approached the police and lodged a complaint based on the mobile numbers used by the fraudsters.Govind Nagar Inspector Ashok Kumar Dubey said a case has been registered and efforts are underway to trace the bank accounts into which the money was transferred.
