Man running fake website using ‘Digital India’ logo held

LUCKNOW : The UP Special Task Force (STF) on Tuesday arrested a man for duping people by allegedly running a fake website using the ‘Digital India’ logo of the union government and video message of Prime Minister Narendra Modi.

The accused, Sudhanshu Shukla, a Pratapgarh resident, was arrested from outside a shopping mall in Gomti Nagar. He duped gullible people by putting fake information regarding several programmes run by the government and offered franchise of government services in his website, said Abhishek Singh, senior superintendent of police, STF.

The accused reportedly cheated over 1,600 people and collected over ₹11 crore from them, said STF officials.

“Shukla invited applications for the franchise through the website and use to charge ₹3,000

to ₹7,000 from the applicants without providing any service,” said the SSP STF.

Singh said the accused used the logo of government-run programme and video of the PM on his website (www.egramdigital.co.in) to make it look like an official government website.

He said the arrest was made after investigation on the inputs provided by central government following several complaints of online cheating through the fake website.

According to ASP of STF Triveni Singh, the website is hosted by a web server based in Switzerland and it was operational for the last six months. Shukla’s two bank accounts through which money transactions were done

ACCORDING TO ASP OF STF TRIVENI SINGH, THE WEBSITE IS HOSTED BY A WEB SERVER BASED IN SWITZERLAND AND IT WAS OPERATIONAL FOR THE LAST SIX MONTHS

had been detected, he added.

Singh said Shukla had a past criminal record and was earlier arrested by the Delhi police in 2013 for posing as an officer of the CBI and cheating people. The accused stayed in jail for a few years and again got into fraudulent activities after coming out on bail in the previous case, he said.