New Delhi, April 15 The Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI), probing a case of digital arrests, nabbed four persons over their involvement in the cybercrime. The CBI team conducted extensive searches at multiple locations and arrested four ‘kingpins’, including two each from Mumbai and Uttar Pradesh’s Moradabad.
The CBI arrests were made as part of its Operation Chakra-V initiative, which seeks to dismantle the infrastructure behind such cyber offences.
Notably, the investigative agency has been at the forefront of a crackdown on cybercrimes like digital arrests, adopting a multi-pronged approach in investigating such cases as well as dismantling the entire infrastructure.
The latest arrests were made in connection with a digital arrest case in Rajasthan. The case was earlier registered at Cyber Police Station Jhunjhunu. The victim was digitally detained for over three months by cybercriminals impersonating personnel of law enforcement agencies and was extorted 42 times, amounting to Rs 7.67 crore.
The CBI, upon taking over the case, conducted an in-depth investigation involving data analysis and profiling. It employed advanced investigative techniques to identify the perpetrators.
The investigative agency conducted extensive searches across 12 locations in Moradabad and Sambhal in Uttar Pradesh and Mumbai, Jaipur, and West Bengal's Krishnanagar, leading to the arrest of four individuals involved in this highly organised crime syndicate.
“Bank account details, debit cards, cheque books, deposit slips, and digital devices evidence were recovered from their possession,” said one of the CBI officials.
“The arrested individuals were produced before the competent court and have been remanded to five days of police custody,” the agency said in a statement.
Notably, the digital arrest scams have taken the nation by storm lately, with scamsters making video calls to the prospective targets.
Their common modus operandi is to pose as officials from any law enforcement agency or any regulating agency and confront the victim over some offence they didn’t even commit.
The cyber syndicate seeks to create psychological pressure on the victims that they have been ‘digitally arrested’ for some crime and then go on to extort money before ‘releasing’ them from digital custody.
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