Jammu: Timely intervention by the Cyber Crime Investigation Centre for Excellence (CICE) of the Crime Branch has secured nearly Rs 40 lakh belonging to a retired Indian Air Force (IAF) officer who lost his hard-earned savings to an alleged ‘digital arrest’ fraud, police said on Sunday.
The recovered amount shall be remitted back to the complainant’s account shortly through court, providing relief to the victim and his family, they added.
CICE Jammu received an online complaint from the retired officer on February 6 regarding a ‘digital arrest’ which allegedly defrauded him of Rs 52.90 lakh, police said in a statement.
The police subsequently launched an investigation and the bank accounts to which the swindled funds were transferred were traced.
Within three hours of receipt of the complaint, an amount of Rs 11.90 lakh was traced to a suspected account at Jodhpur and was immediately placed on hold by invoking the newly-issued standard operating procedure (SOP) in such investigations, the statement said.
Additionally, the police said a lien (freeze) of Rs 4.90 lakh was marked in subsequent layers of linked bank accounts.
Further coordinated efforts with the concerned banks led to the tracing of an additional Rs 28 lakhs in a second layer of suspected accounts, the police said.
With this, the total amount of Rs 39.90 lakh out of the defrauded sum, has been successfully secured.
The police said this case marks the first operational use of the newly-issued SOP by CICE Jammu, demonstrating its effectiveness in financial investigation.
