Lawyer, Son Lose ₹50L to Scammers

Survivors allege forced labour despite warnings, four booked

- Sukhpreet Singh

LUDHIANA: A lawyer and her son lost over ₹50 lakh to fraudsters. The woman claimed that ₹26.59 lakh were stolen from the account of her son, while the fraudsters transferred ₹24.04 lakh to several bank accounts from her two bank accounts. She did not receive any call or share any OTP with anyone, despite the money being transferred to unknown accounts.

The Jamalpur police lodged an FIR on Saturday after around one and a half years long investigation. The accused have been identified as K Arumugar of Tamil Nadu, Bharat Kumar of Andhra Pradesh, Mansur Khan of Maharashtra, Rahul of Chhattisgarh and Hardik Thakur of Gujarat.

The complainant, Priya Gupta of Sawan Vihar, Bhamian Road, stated that her son Divij Gupta went abroad on a study visa. She added that they needed to pay his college fees. When she checked the bank account of her son, she was shocked to see that ₹26.59 lakh was stolen from the account in two transactions. When she checked her two bank accounts, she found that ₹24.04 lakh were transferred from her accounts in seven different transactions.

The woman further stated that she did not get any SMS or notification from the bank about the transactions.

Moreover, the bank did not ask her for clearance for the amount transfer. She filed a complaint on October 11, 2023 to the police.