India News | Woman Held in Tilak Nagar for Swindling Men Online

New Delhi, Jan 29 (PTI) A 29-year-old woman was arrested here for allegedly duping people after befriending them online, police said on Saturday.

The accused was arrested from Krishna Puri area of West Delhi's Tilak Nagar at the complaint of a man named Dharam Raj, they said.

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Raj told police that the accused had approached him on Facebook introducing herself as Amara Gujral who lived in the UK.

During their chats, the woman told him about her plans to come to Delhi.

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Then later, the man received a phone call from a woman in Mumbai who introduced herself as a custom officer. She told him that Gujral was detained at the airport with some valuable items and can only be released if she pays a fee, police said.

The man transferred Rs 34,000 into the account number provided by the woman. After that, he was blocked from WhatsApp and Facebook by the accused, police said.

Acting on the complaint, police nabbed the woman who operated the Facebook profile with name Amara Gujral, from her rented flat, Deputy Commissioner of Police (north) Sagar Singh Kalsi said.

During interrogation, the accused revealed that she began the fraud after learning about it from African neighbours in her locality, who used the same modus operandi to dupe people, the DCP said.

To execute her fraud, she bought a number of local and UK SIM cards and created several fake Facebook profiles with such names as Amara Gujral, Lakshikha Choudhry, Avni Chopra, Avantika Chopra, Anamika Gujral, and Emily Rose.

Photos uploaded on these profiles were downloaded from original profiles of UK residents, police said.

She would send friend request to Facebook users and would start talking to them on WhatsApp.

In the present case, the accused had also sent pictures of valuable items and photographs of flight tickets for her arrival in India, they said.

(The above story is verified and authored by Press Trust of India (PTI) staff. PTI, India’s premier news agency, employs more than 400 journalists and 500 stringers to cover almost every district and small town in India.. The views appearing in the above post do not reflect the opinions of LatestLY)