Nuclear scientist, GST officer, doctors targetted by honey-trapping gang

new delhi: One could easily wonder what a Delhi-based doctor, a GST officer in Gujarat, a teacher from Haryana and a nuclear scientist could have in common. Interestingly, all of them were among a group of 25 to 30 victims picked out by a trio of two mechanical engineers and an SSC aspirant in their bid to identify and rob what they considered high-value and lucrative targets.

The Delhi Police have now arrested all three accused in a case where the trio used people's professional status on their social media profiles to identify them as potential targets and then honey-trap them through a fake profile. Police said the accused changed the profile picture of their fake profile every 10 days and moved on to fresh targets.

Deputy Commissioner of Police (Shahdara) Amit Sharma said the woman in the group, preparing for her SSC exams, first started exclusively contacting people who claimed to be doctors on their Facebook pages. She would then chat the doctors up on Facebook messenger before gaining their trust and asking for money under the pretext of an emergency.

In one of the cases, they duped one doctor from a Delhi-based hospital of more than Rs 1 lakh. Once the money came in their e-wallets, two of the accused used to go to a money exchange shop around 200 kilometres away from the place of incident and then transfer the amount into a different account.

The investigation revealed that they also shortlisted their target by scanning for government officials on Facebook. "When we nabbed them they were in contact with 25 to 30 people. Few of them claimed that they were working in Delhi hospitals as doctors, engineers, a Gujarat-based GST officer, one nuclear scientist, a teacher from Haryana and others," one investigator said.

The case was handled by sub-inspectors (Cyber Cell Shahdara) Rahul and Rohtash who arrested the accused from Uttar Pradesh. "Every day they used to send messages to 10 to 15 random profiles saying 'hii' from their fake profile having a profile photo of a woman. If they got a reply, they proceeded with the scam," one official said.