New Delhi: CBI has filed a chargesheet against a bank official and the owner of a Pulwama-based firm in connection with a case of “digital arrest” of a resident of Delhi.The crooks extorted Rs 1.6 crore from the senior citizen after holding her captive for days.The accused have been identified as Umer Iqbal, proprietor of M/s Himalayan Enterprises, and Umer Ahmad Dar, a deputy manager with Axis Bank, officials said.To con the victim, the criminals posed as law enforcement and judicial officials and made video calls to her, threatening her with arrest. The elderly woman was made to disclose all her assets and savings and stopped from sharing any information with her family, citing an ongoing investigation. The scammers accused her of receiving drug money in her account and asked her to transfer the funds for “verification”.After the scammers went underground with the money, the woman approached Delhi Police and filed a complaint. The Supreme Court transferred the case from Delhi Police to CBI, and the agency began a probe after filing a fresh case in Jan this year.CBI first arrested the accused proprietor of the private firm whose current account was used for receiving the siphoned amount. “Part of the crime proceeds were also paid to the deputy manager of Axis Bank for facilitating siphoning of the fund,” the CBI said.The role of a transnational organised gang based in Southeast Asia has been confirmed in the probe.“The chargesheet has been filed for offences of criminal conspiracy, receiving stolen property, cheating and using forged document under BNS, as well as offences of cheating and impersonation using a computer resource under IT Act and offences of bribery under Prevention of Corruption Act,” the agency said.
