IIT Professor 'Digitally Arrested' For 12 Days By Scammers, Loses Rs 12 Lakh

Cyber criminals have duped an IIT Jodhpur professor of nearly Rs 12 lakh after being held under 'digit arrest' for 12 days.

The cyber criminals, posing as Mumbai Crime Branch officials, told the victim that she was a suspect in a money laundering case.

A parcel belonging to the woman professor had arrived in Mumbai in which drugs, passport and credit cards had been found. Therefore, she will have to remain under surveillance otherwise she would be arrested, the cyber criminals said.

Sub-Inspector Mahendra Kumar of Karvad police station said: "An incident of digital arrest has been reported with IIT Jodhpur's Assistant Professor Amrita Puri, the 35-year-old wife of Nitesh Anirav and a resident of Patiala, Punjab.

She currently lives in the IIT campus at Jodhpur.

Professor Amrita in her complaint alleged that she received several calls from different numbers on August 1.

"When I received the call, the caller introduced himself as a policeman," she said.

The caller told the professor: "A parcel of yours has arrived in Mumbai. Drugs have been found in this parcel. There are also many passports and credit cards. You should report it to Mumbai Cyber ​​Crime Branch. The cyber criminal himself transferred the call to the Cyber branch."

"There the other person introduced himself as the DCP of Mumbai's Cyber ​​Crime Branch. He said: "You are trapped in a money laundering case. So you have to cooperate, otherwise you will be arrested and sent to jail." I got scared and kept doing whatever those people told me to do," the professor said.

The cyber criminals took control of my mobile phone and kept my camera on, she added.

According to the police, the scammers talked about keeping the professor under constant surveillance.

"The cyber criminals took control of her mobile phone, kept the camera on and shared the screen. Not only this, her laptop was also taken under control through Skype app. The professor could not even contact anyone. Whatever the professor did, it was under the surveillance of the cyber criminals. The professor was put under surveillance from August 1."

However, the cyber criminals shunted all access as soon as the money was transferred 10 days later, i.e. on August 11, when there was talks of financial verification, following which details of all the professor's accounts and funds were taken.

On Tuesday, around Rs 11,97,000 were transferred through a cheque to one of the professor's accounts in Yes Bank through Real-Time Gross Settlement (RTGS).

As soon as the money was transferred to the cyber criminals, they removed access from all communication devices of the professor.

Later, the professor realised that she had been cheated following which she informed the Cyber police station.

Further investigations are underway.

(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)