Scams over the telephone have led to several people suffering financial losses, but this may be the first instance in which one such attempted fraud allegedly cost a woman her life.
On Monday, Malti Verma, 58, a teacher in a government school in Agra, received a WhatsApp call from a man whose display photo was that of a police official. The man told the teacher that her college-going daughter had been caught in a sex racket.
Ms Verma's son, Dipanshu, said the call came around noon and the man asked her to deposit Rs 1 lakh in a particular account to ensure that her daughter came back home safe and no case was filed.
The man also allegedly told Ms Verma that he was calling her to ensure that the family did not have to go through the trauma of having their daughter implicated in a sex racket-related case.
"My mother taught in a government girls junior high school in Agra's Achnera. After she got the call from the man, she panicked and called me, and I asked her for the number from which she had received the call. When I checked the number, I found that it had a +92 prefix and I told her it was a scam. She was still very anxious and started feeling unwell," said Dipanshu.
"I reassured her and also told her that I had spoken to my sister, who was in college and was fine. My mother's health kept deteriorating, however, and when she came back from school, she said she was feeling some pain. We gave her something to drink but things got worse and she died," he added.
Additional Commissioner of Police Mayank Tiwari said the family filed a complaint on Thursday.
"The family has complained that Ms Verma died of a heart attack. The cause for this, her husband has said, was that she had received a call stating that her daughter had been caught in a sex racket and the caller had demanded Rs 1 lakh from her. She got very worried because of this and died 15 minutes after she reached home. She was cremated on Tuesday and we have received the complaint today. We are investigating the number from which the call came and will take action," Mr Tiwari said.
(With inputs from Naseem Ahmad)
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