CBI searches 89 sites in 20 states over digital-arrest frauds worth Rs 42.36 crore

The Central Bureau of Investigation searched 89 locations across 20 states on Friday in three digital-arrest cases that, on the agency's tally, drained Rs 42.36 crore from three victims. Three people were arrested. The work sits inside Operation Chakra-VI, the CBI programme that takes over large cyber-fraud files from state police and follows the money across state lines.

A digital arrest, as the agency describes it, is not a court order. Callers who pose as police, judges or central officers keep a victim on a phone or video link for days or weeks. They allege a crime, forbid contact with family, and demand transfers described as bail, verification deposits or asset checks. The three files opened on Friday show how long that pressure can last and how large the sums can become once a victim is isolated.

One case is tied to BITS Pilani. The victim was held on the line for three months and paid Rs 7.67 crore to people claiming to be police officers. The CBI note does not name the victim or say what role, if any, that person holds at the institute. A second case, registered in Gujarat, also ran for three months. The loss there is Rs 19.24 crore, again to callers posing as police. The third file, from Karnataka, ran for one month and cost the victim Rs 15.45 crore. Together those three numbers are the Rs 42.36 crore cited in Friday's briefing.

The searches were planned from bank records and from logs of who accessed which online accounts. Officers seized account papers, digital devices and other material that the agency says will go for forensic work. The stated aim was to map handlers and beneficiaries before those people could wipe devices or close accounts.

The three arrests, on the CBI account, are about the cash trail rather than the original voice calls. Akash, a Haryana resident, received Rs 1.95 crore in an account he opened himself and moved the money the same day. Raja Karmakar of Kolkata received Rs 1.5 crore in a firm account. Jyoti Rani, also of Kolkata, took a portion of the proceeds, withdrew some of it in cash and sent the rest onward. The agency says those steps show knowing work to layer and scatter the money.

State police registered the original complaints. The CBI took the files over because the transfers crossed state boundaries and because the same pattern has appeared in many districts. Earlier phases of Operation Chakra produced arrests and mutual legal assistance requests aimed at call centres outside India. Friday's action is narrower. It is a simultaneous strike on the domestic accounts that received the three large Indian losses.

The figures are large enough to matter for the victims' credit and property. Rs 19.24 crore paid over three months is not a single panicked transfer. It is a sequence of payments made while the victim was told that speaking to anyone else would worsen a fabricated case. That is why the agency is treating the files as organised crime rather than as isolated cheating.

What the Friday note does not yet give is a count of how much of the Rs 42.36 crore can still be frozen. Same-day onward transfers of the kind described in Akash's account are designed to leave an empty balance by the time a bank freeze arrives. Recovery will depend on how far the layered accounts sit inside India and how quickly those banks act on the search papers.

The next public test is whether the CBI can name the people who ran the calls, not only the people who parked the money. The three arrested on Friday are, on the present record, receivers. The voices that kept three people on a line for one to three months are still the core of the case.