Ahmedabad: A 61-year-old fruit trader lost Rs 5.67 lakh from his bank account after allegedly clicking a link in a text message about paying a traffic challan for his car and downloading a suspicious APK file, police said on Sunday.The complainant, a resident of Makarba, stated in his FIR filed on Saturday that he received the message on Aug 22 from an unknown number. The message asked him to pay the challan and contained a link. When he clicked it, an application named mParivahan.apk was downloaded on his phone. He immediately closed it and did not suspect anything was wrong.On Sep 2 morning, he noticed multiple messages showing that money had been debited from his account. He showed the messages to his brother and went to his bank’s Naroda branch, where officials allegedly told him that he had fallen victim to cyber fraud.The trader subsequently approached cybercrime officials, who examined his phone and found the APK file. According to the complaint, the malicious application allegedly enabled the fraudsters to gain access to his phone and banking information.Between September 1 and 2, seven IMPS transactions were allegedly made from his account to different accounts linked to NSDL Payments Bank. The transactions included amounts of Rs 67,700, Rs 50,000 and Rs 1 lakh, with the total loss amounting to Rs 5.67 lakh.The victim immediately reported the fraud by calling the cybercrime helpline.Police have registered a complaint and are investigating the APK file, transaction trail and beneficiary accounts to identify those behind the fraud.
