Mumbai: Conmen pose as RBI officials, cheat cloth trader of Rs 93 lakh

After making 60 transactions to six different bank accounts, a 66-year-old South Mumbai based cloth trader realised that fake RBI officials had cheated him of Rs 93 lakh. Victim Lalit Shah has filed a complaint with the Dongri police station in the matter. Police said that the accused cheated him on the promise of providing him crores of rupees under the Pradhan Mantri Jan-Dhan Yojana.

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According to Shah, he first received a call on February 25, when the caller identified himself as Vijaykumar Bhardwaj, an RBI official, and offered him Rs 1.48 crore under the government scheme. The caller told Shah that he had to open an account in a nationalised bank and pay some processing fee.

Few weeks later, he received another call regarding the matter. This person identified himself as 'Mr Tiwari' from RBI. He said that Bhardwaj had made some mistakes in the previous transaction, due to which his money got locked.

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So, he would have to pay some more. After this he received multiple calls from a number of people identified as Prem Kothari, Alka Mathur, Rajiv Mittal, Raghunath Rao, Raj Reddy and Omprakash Gupta.

Police said that since February, Shah made 60 transactions to six different bank accounts, and lost R93.63 lakh in the process.

Speaking to mid-day, Manoj Kumar Sharma, deputy commissioner of police, said, "We have registered a case under relevant sections of IPC and Information Technology Act, against seven to eight people. Details of the bank accounts are being collected. Further investigation is on."