A Kolkatan has reported to police that she had received a call from a man posing as an officer of Hazratganj police station in Lucknow and told her that Lucknow customs had seized a consignment sent by her containing drugs and 20 passports.
The call came from a number that was listed as that of the station house officer of the police station on the website of the Uttar Pradesh police, the woman said.
The woman did not suffer any financial loss as she had disconnected the call before the caller could convince her to transfer money to avoid being arrested for the consignment, which she had not sent in the first place.
The Uttar Pradesh police have started a case on Saturday, mentioning that two of their “closed user group” (CUG) numbers had been cloned and were being misused to dupe people in Bangalore, Delhi, Gurgaon and Kolkata.
The Uttar Pradesh police told The Telegraph that the case had been registered under Section 507 of the Indian Penal Code (offence dealing with criminal intimidation by anonymous communication from concealed identity) and Section 66 of the Information Technology Act.
“Two of our CUG numbers have possibly been cloned and are being misused to dupe people across the country. We have registered an FIR in this matter. We are getting calls from Bangalore, Delhi, Gurgaon and Kolkata saying they had received calls from these two numbers. We want to clarify that the numbers are not being used to make any fraudulent calls,” Vikram Singh, station house officer, Hazratgunj police station, told this newspaper on Sunday evening.
The woman, who said she had reported the matter to Kolkata police, had received the call last week when she was in office, sources said.
The caller introduced himself as an executive of a courier company and said a consignment booked by someone whose Aadhaar details are the same as hers had been intercepted by the Lucknow customs. It was found to contain drugs, 20 passports and multiple credit cards, among other items.
The caller told her to contact Hazratgunj police station in Lucknow when she said she had not sent the consignment.
“The caller then said he was redirecting the call to Hazratgunj police station. The man who answered the call introduced himself as a police officer. He took down my details and asked me to open the official website of the Uttar Pradesh police and select Hazratgunj police station from the ‘thana’ sub-section. The name of an SHO was mentioned along with two mobile numbers. He said he would call me and if the number matched with either of the numbers mentioned on the website, my phone was safe. Or else, I would have to assume that my phone had been hacked,” the woman said.
Minutes later, she said she had received a call from one of the numbers.
She was asked to download a chatting app but before she could share details of the ID of the app she had downloaded, the call dropped, sources said.
When another call came from the same number seconds later, the woman became suspicious and disconnected it. She, instead, called the courier company’s customer care number.
From there she learned that no consignment had been booked in her name and no one from the company had called her.
She then realised that someone had tried to dupe her using a mobile number of the station house officer of Hazratgunj police station.
The Telegraph has reported earlier about cases where Kolkatans received fraudulent calls from people posing as senior IPS officers or bank officials. The police said this was possibly the first time that a fraudulent call came from a number resembling that of a genuine police officer.