Four persons were booked nearly three months after the 20-year-old son of a customs officer allegedly died by suicide on July 17, following an “investment scam” in which he lost Rs 1.8 lakh to fraudsters he used to communicate through Telegram. The man had jumped in front of a train between Ghatkopar and Vikhroli railway stations. The incident came to light after the Government Railway Police (GRP) on Saturday registered an abetment to suicide case against four persons in whose bank account the money belonging to the deceased, Vivek Tete, was transferred. Sambhaji Yadav, senior inspector of Kurla GRP, where the FIR was registered, said that Vivek, a college student, who resided in Powai with his family, had come across a gaming platform earlier this year. “In the quiz cum investment game, if you gave correct answers, money was transferred to your account. On July 15, Vivek invested Rs 1,000 and received Rs 2,000. Later after investing Rs 8,000, he received Rs 16,000, an officer said. Convinced that it was a genuine platform, he was offered a scheme of investing Rs 4 lakh,” he said. An official said that while he invested Rs 80,000, he asked his father to transfer another Rs 1 lakh through Gpay to the fraudsters and told him that he checked the bona fides of the platform online and it was genuine, an officer said. When they asked for more money, his father said the Gpay limit had been reached for the day and it would take 24 hours to get added as a beneficiary. The fraudsters then provided a bank account where a beneficiary could be added within an hour, the official added. Vivek’s father then transferred Rs 1.24 lakh to that account. However, it was instantly refunded by the bank stating that the account to which the money was being transferred was a fraudulent account. “His father told him it was a fraud but the accused kept harassing Vivek through Telegram asking him to pay the money or else he would lose all the money he had invested. He kept telling his father to transfer money,” an officer said. His father told him to forget about the money lost and not send any more money because they would lose that as well. “On July 17, Vivek went to a mall along with his mother while his father was on his way to pick them up. He slipped out of the mall without his mother realising it. His father reached the mall and they looked for him all over but did not find him,” an officer said. An officer said the boy went to Vikhroli and stood before a running train between Vikhroli and Ghatkopar, killing himself. He also left a suicide note saying his body would be found between the two stations. Police filed an Accidental Death Report (ADR) as the family was in shock. Later, his father told police about the investments where he had lost money. It was during the probe that the police found the money had been transferred to accounts in Madhya Pradesh and other states. Accordingly, police registered an abetment to suicide case against the account holders identified as Govind Ahirwar, Sushilkumar Mishra, Aman Abbas and Harjeet Singh Sandhu. An officer said they will sending teams to the residential address provided by the accused when they opened the bank account.
