THE STATE Cybercrime Centre of Excellence on Wednesday said it arrested three persons for “cheating a person of Rs 11.42 crore by using the modus operandi of digital arrest.” The Cybercrime Cell identified the arrested accused as Kashyap Arun Belani, Dinesh Chhaganlal Limbachiya and Dhaval Mahesh Mevada. According to a statement, the accused persons called the victim “posing as officials from the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) and the police, and claimed that a phone number activated in their name had been used for criminal activities.” The victim panicked further when the impersonators claimed that an investigation was underway by several agencies, including the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI), the Reserve Bank of India (RBI), the Securities and Exchange Board of India (SEBI). The victim was warned by the accused not to step out of the house or communicate with anyone else. The victim was kept under constant watch by way of video calls over several days during which the accused coerced the victim to pay them a total of Rs 11,42,75,000. The accused, said officials, had opened bank accounts in the names of several charitable trusts through which these ill-gotten proceeds of crime were disbursed through a crime syndicate. When the details of the bank account of the trust named Vishwa Global Charitable Trust were checked on the national database, police officials found a total of 11 complaints against this bank account including from Maharashtra, Telangana and Tamil Nadu with total transactions of Rs18.55 crore. Of this amount, Rs 3.159 crore was still found in the account and was frozen by the police.
