KOLKATA: A woman, who reportedly attended a Covid vaccination camp in Baghajatin, where she had to produce her Aadhaar card, claimed Rs 1 lakh had been siphoned off from her account after she received an Aadhaar-related call.
According to the complaint registered at the Patuli police station, Tutin Mukherjee Halder (37) received the fraud call around 10.30am last Tuesday, a few days after attending the vaccination camp.
The caller reportedly asked her Aadhaar card details and sought her permission to link the UID number with her mobile.
She agreed and within minutes, Rs 1 lakh was deducted from her account from the Ganguly Bagan branch of a public sector bank.
A case of cheating and criminal conspiracy has been registered.
Police, however, dismissed chances of Aadhar details being leaked from the vaccination camp.
“People have the wrong notion that showing original or photocopies of Aadhaar cards at vaccination camps can be risky.
This con job is neither specific to Covid times nor is it the first such crime here.
Fraudsters don’t need Aadhaar details for the scam though knowing the number helps in earning the victims’ confidence,” said a Lalbazar officer.
People, especially senior citizens, getting calls for linking bank accounts or phone numbers to Aadhaar should be careful, warned cops.
The fraudsters, pretending to be representatives of the Unique Identification Authority of India, which managed the Aadhaar database, called targets, offering to link their Aadhaar with PAN or phone numbers, police said.
The accused used an OTP to change the targets’ phone number linked to Aadhaar number on the website.
“The perpetrators replace the victims’ phone numbers with their own.
They then download a popular United Payment Interface-supported application, which automatically detects Aadhaar numbers linked to the SIM of the phone in which the banking application is installed.
At the end of this operation, the conman has access to the targets’ bank accounts,” an officer said.