4 min readJun 19, 2026 09:52 AM IST
First published on: Jun 18, 2026 at 02:28 PM IST
Cyber scammers have struck again, this time, targetting a high-profile person — Naresh Gujral, a former Member of Parliament (MP) and the son of former Prime Minister I K Gujral. He was duped of Rs 7.8 crore, but the Delhi Police have managed to freeze Rs 4 crore.
It started late last week when a senior official at the financial division of a textile company owned by Naresh Gujral received a WhatsApp message from an unknown number. The display picture (DP) was that of his boss, the former Rajya Sabha MP Naresh Gujral.
The WhatsApp message instructed the official to make a large electronic transfer of money to a particular bank account. “He (the official) was asked to transfer around Rs 1.5 crore through RTGS to an account whose details were given to him,” a police officer said. Real-Time Gross Settlement (RTGS) is a way to urgently make high-value transactions between bank accounts.
WhatsApp scam using fake profile pic
But the sender of the message was not Naresh.
“My employee tried calling the number. But the fraudster disconnected,” said Naresh. He said the scammer, posing as Naresh, said he could not answer since he was in a meeting.
It was someone who had used Naresh’s profile picture, and made an effort to sound like him over WhatsApp, the police officer said. However, this thought apparently never crossed the mind of the company official.
“He could have contacted my secretary… But he got trapped in the ‘boss scam’,” said Naresh.
So over the next four days, three more transactions were requested by the alleged fraudster, and the company official complied each time. In the end, a total of Rs 7.8 crore had been transferred to the account of the alleged fraudster, police officers said.
Bank raises alarm
Alarm bells did go off in Naresh’s bank, though, and they decided to check with the Chief Financial Officer (CFO) of the company if the transfers were legit.
“The bank called the CFO of Mr (Naresh) Gujral’s company as they were alarmed by the huge transactions. But the CFO, who apparently assumed that the instructions were from Mr Naresh, allowed the RTGS transfers from the company’s account,” a source said.
It was only on June 16 that the official contacted Diksha, the daughter of the 78-year-old former MP, and told her about the money that “her father” had been instructing him to transfer.
“Diksha, who was alarmed to know that her father was suddenly in need of so much money, asked him about the transactions. Naresh told her that he had never contacted the official or asked for these transfers to be made,” the source said.
Complaint lodged, money frozen
It was then that the family suspected a fraud and contacted the police. An e-FIR was registered on June 16.
The specialised Intelligence Fusion and Strategic Operations (IFSO) unit of the Delhi Police took up the case and tracked down the account to which the transfers had been made. Surprisingly, they found that the bulk of the transferred money was still sitting there.
“The last transaction happened on Tuesday, and I filed a complaint just four-five hours later. I guess that helped,” said Naresh.
This was unusual because the pattern in Internet financial fraud has been that the cheated money disappears quickly, often within minutes.
“Rs 4 crore was traced and frozen. Usually by this point, the money is either cashed out or is converted to crypto. But it was still flowing in the banking system,” said the source.
Naresh, whose late father was the Prime Minister of India for 11 months from April 1997 to March 1998, trained to be a chartered accountant and became a businessman with interests in textiles and apparel manufacturing. He was a Rajya Sabha MP from Punjab from 2007 to 2022, and is a senior leader of the Shiromani Akali Dal (SAD). He is the nephew of the celebrated late artist Satish Gujral.
Former Rajya Sabha MP Naresh Gujral, son of former Prime Minister I K Gujral, was targeted in a WhatsApp scam. (File Photo) 
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