Cybercriminals allegedly placed a retired Indian Army colonel and his wife under “digital arrest” and duped them of Rs 49 lakh in this Himachal Pradesh district, police said on Fri day. The complainant re ceived a video call on WhatsApp in which a man introduced himself as an “officer of the Mumbai Crime Branch”. The suspected fraudster claimed that the retired army of ficer’s Aadhaar was used to procure four SIM cards and open a bank account in Mumbai that was used to launder Rs 2 crore. The fraudster also threat ended to look into the couple’s bank accounts. The victims were under “supervision” of the fraudster for almost 11 hours a day since first receiving a call on March 23. They were also kept on video call while transferring money via RTGS (Real Time Gross Settlement) to the account number provided by the accused, according to the complaint lodged by the retired army officer. Claiming that the source of the couple’s funds was being investigated, the accused demanded money and the complainant

transferred Rs 9 lakh on March 29 and Rs 40 lakh on April 4. The couple were kept under “digital arrest” till April 7. When they realised they had been cheated, they approached the police on April 10. A case of cheating was registered at the Cyber Crime police station in Mandi and Rs 5.58 lakh frozen in some suspicious accounts.