The Special Task Force (STF) of the Uttarakhand Police on Sunday evening arrested a 41-year-old man for digitally arresting and duping the vice-chancellor of a retired university in Nainital. $1.47 lakh crore in August last year.
The accused, identified as Bhupinder Singh, is a resident of Ambala in Haryana. The victim, Dr Beena Shah, 72, former vice-chancellor of Mahatma Jyotiba Phule Rohilkhand University, resides in Mallital, Nainital.
“The accused kept the victim under digital arrest through WhatsApp calls for 12 days and urged her to make a lump sum transfer $Rs 1.47 crore to multiple bank accounts,” Senior Superintendent of Police (STF) Ajay Singh said.
The First Information Report (FIR) was registered at the cyber police station in Rudrapur under Sections 3(5), 61(2) and 318(4) of the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita (BNS) Act and Section 66D of the Information Technology (IT) Act.
On August 14, 2025, she received a phone call from a man claiming to be a senior official of the Reserve Bank of India, who claimed that $Rs 7-8 crore obtained through hawala transactions were illegally deposited in her account.
Soon after, she received a video call from another person posing as a Maharashtra Police officer. The caller threatened her with arrest and other legal action, ordered her to transfer the money to specific bank accounts, and assured her that the amount would be recovered once the alleged investigation was completed.
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Fearing arrest, Shah transferred money from three of her bank accounts to five accounts allegedly controlled by the fraudsters. When bank officials became suspicious of the unusually large transactions, she told them the money was intended to buy a new home. By the time bank employees notified her relatives and the police, $Rs 1.47 lakh crore has already been withdrawn.
“Our investigators tracked down $50 thousand of the stolen amount is for the account of the arrested accused. “We then arrested him after technical analysis, examination of digital evidence and continuous surveillance,” Singh said.
He added: “Our further investigations in this matter are ongoing.”
