A 50-year-old Calcuttan, who was included in a WhatsApp group and lured into making investments against promises of high returns, lost more than ₹16 lakh, police said.

Four persons have been arrested in connection with this fraud on Tuesday. The police said they had located multiple bank accounts used to park the money.

The police said Goutam Roy Chowdhury, 50, a resident of Nayabad in Purba Jadavpur, had complained that he was added to a WhatsApp group. Then the group members allegedly induced him into investing ₹16.42 lakh in some particular shares.

“The complainant kept on investing the money in instalments and transferred money in various bank accounts as he was instructed from March 9 onwards. However, later he realised, that his entire money was lost and he had not gained anything,” said an officer at the Kolkata Police headquarters.

The officer added that the complainant was provided with forged certificates of
the investments to convince him to continue with his investments.

It was in June this year that the complainant lodged a complaint with Kolkata Police.

Based on his complaint, a case was registered under sections of cheating, forgery, criminal conspiracy and sections of the Information Technology Act.

The police said they had arrested four persons — Praveen Goel, 39, of Golabari, Howrah, Om Prakash Mishra, 36, also from Howrah, Shiva Kumar Sonkar, 36, of Bagbazar in Shyampukur and Aloke Agarwal, 44, also from Shyampukur.

“Each of them had a different role in this fraud. Their roles were divided from handling the beneficiary accounts to supplying mule accounts that were used for such fraudulent transactions,” said the officer.

The police said six mobile phones, 52 unused SIM cards, eight rubber stamps with different company names, one debit card and some documents were found in their possession. The cops have seized all the items.

₹1.43 crore trail

While investigating another complaint of loss amounting to ₹1.43 crore, where a different group had allegedly duped the complainant, the police arrested one person, identified as Bikram Basak, on Thursday

Basak has allegedly told the police that he was in touch with a person from China through WhatsApp who had been instructing him to carry out the alleged fraud. The amounts that were siphoned off were transferred to this man in China in the form of cryptocurrency.

The police were in the process of verifying Basak’s statement.