A 20-year-old man, suspected to be part of a sextortion cybercrime racket, was apprehended from Mewat in Haryana last week for allegedly targeting elderly people and extorting money from them.
The police, identifying the accused as Sachin — who goes by a single name, as per his ID cards — said the suspect and his associate made video calls to their targets, played obscene video clips, recorded the calls and used the same to blackmail them.
While Sachin was arrested by the Shahdara cyber police in a raid at Niwana village in Haryana’s Nuh district, his associate, believed to be the leader of the racket, is absconding, the police said.
“Interrogation of the suspect revealed that his leader and he committed multiple cybercrimes in Delhi-NCR and other states using the same modus operandi. As of now, we have been able to connect two cases to them, including one that was reported to us last month and another from a different state,” the investigating officer, requesting anonymity, said.
Deputy commissioner of police (Shahdara) Surendra Chaudhary said that the action comes on the basis of a sextortion complaint filed in the third week of March by a 60-year-old man, who claimed to be the recipient of a video call from an unknown source, wherein a woman performed obscene acts during the call.
Subsequently, the complainant received multiple threat calls from different numbers.
Chaudhary said: “The callers introduced themselves as police officers and threatened to circulate the video recording with the complainant’s face on social media and to his relatives if he did not pay them. Concerned about his reputation, the elderly man transferred ₹98,000 to the bank account of the criminals. When the blackmailing continued, he filed the complaint. A case of impersonation and cheating was registered under sections 419 and 420 of the Indian Penal Code.”
The investigating team collected details of the mobile numbers that were used by the fraudsters and the money trail by tracing bank accounts through which the money was routed. Through technical analysis, investigators traced the phone numbers to Mewat.
“One mobile phone and two SIM cards were seized from him. Sachin’s interrogation revealed his involvement in a network of cyber fraud orchestrated in collaboration with his childhood friend with whom he had been conspiring for the past two months. The duo employed similar modus operandi to target multiple victims. The absconding suspect handled the financial aspect of the operation,” Chaudhary said.
