Mumbai: A 78-year-old Chembur woman lost around ₹ 1.9 crore to a “digital arrest” fraud after allegedly being kept under virtual confinement for nearly a month by cyber fraudsters posing as Anti-Terrorism Squad (ATS) and police officers, who threatened to implicate her in a terror-funding case linked to the April 2025 Pahalgam attack.
The complaint was initially reported through the cybercrime helpline before the East Cyber police registered a case against unidentified persons for cheating, impersonation, wrongful confinement and identity theft under the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita (BNS) and the Information Technology Act, the police said. She was instructed not to leave her home and to report to them every hour. They also asked her to download the encrypted messaging app Signal to communicate with them. “The complainant was coerced into visiting a stock broking firm in Chembur to sell her equity shareholdings. She was also forced to prematurely break her fixed deposits (FDs) and pool the proceeds into her savings accounts.
The complainant, who is a retired corporate executive, lives with her 80-year-old husband in Chembur. Between October 14 and October 26, the woman transferred a total of ₹ 1.9 crore across three bank accounts given by the frauds.
The police said the woman was told that bank accounts opened in her name had received money from Mohammad Asif alias Asif Fauji, a former Pakistani Army Special Service Group (SSG) commando and a key suspect in the Pahalgam terror attack. The alleged fraud took place between October 6 and November 1, during which the accused allegedly kept the woman under what is commonly known as a “digital arrest” by impersonating senior anti-terror and police officers. The accused told the woman that plainclothes police officers had been deployed outside her housing society to keep an eye on her. Two of the fraudsters, identifying themselves as ATS officer Ajay Mehta and police commissioner Rakesh Agrawal, then pressured the woman into liquidating her financial assets, the police said. They sent her forged Reserve Bank of India (RBI) letters and demanded the funds to be transferred to designated bank accounts for verification, promising that the entire amount would be returned once the case was closed,” said a police officer from the East Cyber police station, which is investigating the matter. When they demanded more money, she reached out to her nephew, a physician based in the United States, who told her she had been cheated,” added the police officer.
