Onlykashmir.in News Desk
The Central Bureau of Investigation has filed a chargesheet against the owner of a Pulwama based private firm and a Deputy Manager of Axis Bank in connection with a ₹1.6 crore “digital arrest” fraud that targeted a senior citizen in Delhi, marking a significant step in the agency’s crackdown on a case rooted partly in Jammu and Kashmir’s banking network.
According to the CBI, the fraud involved perpetrators impersonating law enforcement and judicial officials over video calls to coerce the elderly victim into transferring money under the guise of a fictitious legal proceeding. The Supreme Court transferred the matter to the CBI after it was initially probed by Delhi Police, underscoring the seriousness with which the judiciary has begun treating the surge in such scams nationwide.
Investigators found that the bank account of the Pulwama based firm was allegedly used as a conduit to receive the defrauded funds, placing a Kashmir based enterprise at the centre of a much larger financial crime network. The CBI further alleged that the Axis Bank Deputy Manager facilitated the movement of the illicit funds and personally received a share of the proceeds, pointing to insider complicity within the banking system that fraud networks have increasingly sought to exploit.
The probe has traced links to a transnational organised cybercrime syndicate operating out of South East Asia, a region that has emerged as a hub for such scams targeting Indian citizens. The chargesheet invokes provisions relating to criminal conspiracy, cheating, impersonation using computer resources, receiving stolen property and forgery under the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita, alongside sections of the Information Technology Act and the Prevention of Corruption Act, reflecting the multi layered legal architecture now being deployed against digital fraud rings.
The agency said its investigation remains active, with further individuals connected to the network likely to be identified. The CBI reiterated a now familiar but critical public advisory: no law enforcement or judicial authority in India has the legal power to place a citizen under “digital arrest” through a video call or any online communication. As such scams continue to proliferate, cases like this one, involving both a local firm and a bank insider, highlight how deeply embedded these networks have become within India’s formal financial system, and the scale of coordinated investigation now required to dismantle them.
