Chandrapur: Retired employee duped of Rs 63 lakh in digital arrest scam
A retired WCL senior mechanic in Chandrapur transferred his life savings after callers posing as police and ED officials threatened his arrest.
A major cyber fraud case has come to light from Chandrapur, in which a retired employee was cheated of Rs 63 lakh 7 thousand. Dinkar Govindrao Khobragade, who lives near Major Gate in the Urjanagar area of Durgapur and retired as a senior mechanic from Western Coalfields Limited (WCL), fell victim to the fraud. He lives with his wife and is 67 years old.
On 26 November 2025, Khobragade received a call on his mobile from an unknown number. The caller identified himself as a Mumbai Police officer and said a new SIM card had been issued in his name. Following this, a person dressed in a police uniform made a WhatsApp video call to him. The fraudsters told him that his identity had been used to open an account at Canara Bank in Mumbai, into which money had come from abroad. To make the story more convincing, they also claimed that a man named Mohammed Saleem had been arrested in the case on suspicion of involvement in anti-national activities, and that he had given Khobragade 10 percent of the money that came into the account.
Khobragade was then threatened with arrest and warned not to speak to anyone about the matter. The fraudsters said clearly that if he told anyone, his son and family would also be arrested. To convince him further, the cyber fraudsters sent a fake Mumbai Crime Branch complaint, a fake Canara Bank statement and a forged Supreme Court notice over WhatsApp. The next day, they sent a fake Enforcement Directorate notice and began demanding a large sum of money in the name of avoiding action.
Out of fear for his life and his family's safety, Khobragade broke his lifetime savings and the fixed deposit he had kept at the Padmapur branch of Bank of India after retirement. Between 1 and 3 December 2025, he transferred a total of Rs 63 lakh 7 thousand via RTGS to various bank accounts given by the accused. After receiving the money, the fraudsters misled him further by sending a fake letter claiming the Enforcement Directorate summons had been cancelled.
Following the incident, the elderly couple remained under mental stress for a long time and did not tell anyone. In September 2026, when the couple went to stay with their son in the Pashan area of Pune, the fraudsters called again on 7 September and resumed the threats, making a fresh claim that an account had been opened and money taken in a bank in Jammu. This time, the son and daughter-in-law grew suspicious of the calls. They immediately had their father's mobile phone switched off and found out the whole story, after which the Rs 63 lakh fraud came to light. The son lost no time in filing an online complaint on the National Cyber Crime Portal.
A complaint was then filed in person at the Chandrapur Cyber Police Station, following which police registered a case against unidentified accused under sections 318(4), 319(2), 308, 336, 205 and 3(5) of the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita (BNS) 2023 and sections 66(C) and 66(D) of the IT Act. Under the supervision of Police Inspector Sunil Vitthalrao Gade, the Chandrapur Cyber Police are conducting a thorough investigation into this inter-state gang.
