Techie working in UK duped of ₹2L, 1 held

MUMBAI: A 52-year-old man from New Delhi was arrested for his involvement in duping an Indian engineer working in the United Kingdom of ₹2 lakh by posing as a UK home department official.

The accused has been identified as Aditya Kohli. According to the police, the complainant, who was working as a systems safety engineer in a private company in UK, had quit his job a few months ago.

While the complainant was returning to Mumbai from UK on November 27, he received a call from a person who identified himself as John Parkar, an official from UK’S home department.

Parkar claimed that the complainant was involved in a money-laundering case and if he did not cooperate with the officials, he would be arrested.

He told the complainant he would be freed if he paid 2,000 pound, equivalent to ₹2 lakh. Parkar obtained the complainant’s banking details and transferred money from there to a “government account”.

The complainant was also sent an acknowledgement copy from Parkar’s email. However, the complainant got curious and when he spoke to some officials at the London airport, he learnt there was no such case against him.

After returning to Mumbai, the complainant obtained details of the suspicious account where his money had been transferred and found it was in a nationalised bank in New Delhi.

The victim then approached the Mumbai police’s cyber police station and an FIR was lodged.

During the investigation, the police obtained details of Kohli, who was brought to Mumbai on transit remand.

“We are interrogating him and trying to obtain details of Kohli’s other associates,” said a cyber police source. The police suspect the involvement of more people in this fraud.