Kolkata: In a major success, Ranaghat Police District has managed to secure conviction of nine persons arrested in a digital arrest case which is first-of-its-kind in India.
On Thursday, the Additional District and Sessions Court, Kalyani held the nine accused guilty. The quantum of punishment is scheduled to be announced on Friday. The entire process, starting from registering the case to the conviction, was completed within nine months.
It was learnt that on November 6, last year, a retired agricultural scientist identified as Partha Kumar Mukhopadhyay of Kalyani lodged a complaint at the Ranaghat Cyber Crime Police Station alleging that on October 19, 2024, he received a call from WhatsApp number wherein the caller introduced himself as Sub Inspector (SI) Hemraj Koli of Andheri Police Station, Mumbai and informed him that he was found involved in a financial fraud. To convince Mukhopadhyay, the fraudster had sent various forged documents related to cases wherein he was mentioned as an accused.
By putting the elderly scientist in fear, the caller forced him to send more than Rs 1 crore to multiple bank accounts on the pretext of digital arrest.
After the case was registered, police had arrested 13 persons from several states like Maharashtra, Gujarat and Haryana but against four, no evidence was found. Therefore, the four of them were released and subsequently their names were not mentioned in the chargesheet.
During the probe, police filed chargesheet against nine accused accusing them for cheating, forgery, impersonation, criminal conspiracy, identity theft, criminal intimidation and others. Special Public Prosecutor of the case, Bibhas Chatterjee has informed that despite the accused persons trying to get bail, he stressed on conducting custody trial which was eventually granted by the court. The trial of the case started from February 24 this year and was completed within five months.
“Digital arrest is nothing but economic terrorism where people are put in fear of getting arrested for such things which they do not know anything about.
In this way the fraudsters siphon off hard earned money out of our country. People should know that there is nothing called digital arrest in the law, said Chatterjee.