Two men were arrested for allegedly duping people by impersonating police officers and claiming to wave off criminal charges against their loved ones, officials said on Thursday.

The accused have been identified as Mohammad Nasar Ali (24) and Santosh Kumar Yadav (27), residents of Champaran in Bihar, they said.

Yadav was allegedly involved in three other cases of similar modus operandi in Haryana and Delhi. He is a graduate in nautical science from Chennai and was also an aspirant to join merchant navy. He used to work with the Bihar Police as a technical support staff on contractual basis, police said.

A complainant alleged that on October 24 last year, he received a WhatsApp call from an unknown man impersonating himself as a policeman, who said that his (complainant) grandson had been picked up by them for his "involvement" in a kidnapping case in which two other persons were already arrested, police said.

The caller also made the complainant listen to the voice of his sobbing grandson to confirm the aforesaid incident, they said.

The caller further asked him to instantly transfer Rs 70,000 for the "release" of his grandson. The accused provided the complainant another number to transfer the money. The victim got scared and transferred Rs 50,000, police said.

At that time, the complainant was not able to contact his grandson and his parents. After a few minutes, the accused again called him and demanded Rs two lakh. The complainant got suspicious on this and contacted his grandson's parents, who informed that his grandson was safe at home, police said.

During investigation, it was found that the transferred amount was received in a bank at Ludhiana in Punjab. The amount was further transferred through different bank accounts and was finally withdrawn in Bihar, Deputy Commissioner of Police (Northeast) Joy Tirkey said.

The location of the accused was traced in Bihar's Champaran. A raid was conducted and Ali and Yadav were nabbed, Tirkey said.

The accused disclosed that they are part of a cheating syndicate operating from Motihari, Bihar, and used to cheat people on the pretext of waving off criminal charges against their loved ones by impersonating police officers, the DCP said.

They randomly used to call people and by impersonating themselves as police officers, they used to threaten the victim that his relative was involved in some heinous crime along with other persons who have already been apprehended, police said.

To pressurise the victims, they also claimed that other persons "involved" in the case had already been arrested and demanded money to save the victims' loved ones, police said.

One member of the syndicate, sobbing and impersonating the so-called relative/family member being kidnapped, used to talk to the victims and request them to save him by paying the money, police said.

The sobbing person pretending as the family member or relative of the victim used to emotionally blackmail them by saying that he would commit suicide if the news of his arrest became public. The accused also used to put up a ‘display pic’ on WhatsApp as a police officer in uniform, so as to make the victim believe them, the DCP added.

Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by The Telegraph Online staff and has been published from a syndicated feed.