AHMEDABAD: A retired deputy superintendent of police in Vadodara would have never thought that he would end up losing Rs 1.51 crore to 49 fraudsters when first of them called up promising to provide Rs 3.50 lakh of his dormant life insurance policy.
The fraudsters who posed as insurance agents from the Reserve Bank of India (RBI), from the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI), lawyers who proposed to represent him in Governing Body of Insurance Council (GBIC), officers of Integrated Grievance Management System (IGMS); Insurance Regulatory and Development Authority (IRDA) and from Insurance Ombudsman office, Delhi, cheated him from September 2014 to January 2021.
Retired DySP Manoj Vaghela, 74, a resident of Akshardham Society on Harani Varasia Ring Road in Vadodara, finally approached the cybercrime cell of the CID (crime and railways) on June 10 with a 21-page complaint after which an FIR under charges of cheating and abetment under IPC along with charges of information technology act was lodged.
Vaghela said in his FIR that he had first got a call from an insurance agent in Delhi named Disha Singhania who enquired about his dormant life insurance policy and offered him a premium of Rs 3.50 lakh.
As Vaghela agreed with her, the sequence of cheating began.
The insurance agent gave him another number of a man who told Vaghela that he had also invested in another policy of a private company which got closed and lured him with Rs 27 lakh premium.
After this, one after another agents called up Vaghela and asked him to pay money under different charges.
They told him that he would have to take other policies in the companies according to their instructions to get the money of his old policies.
On their instructions, Vaghela ended up paying Rs 61.65 lakh which include policies worth Rs 12 lakh for his family members and Rs 49 lakh as third-party policies between September 2014 and May 2015.
However, as nothing concrete happened, they told Vaghela that he would have to pay money to some CBI and RBI officers to clear his file.
Again, he followed their instructions and paid Rs 5.50 lakh to different persons who posed as CBI and RBI officers in July 2015.
On August 5, 2016, he got a call from a person who introduced himself as a Mumbai-based lawyer and promised to return his money stuck in insurance policies by approaching GBIC.
Vaghela agreed to that and kept them giving money whenever and whatever they demanded.
This time, he ended up paying Rs 9 lakh to the fake lawyers who even sent various documents to Vaghela showing on how his case was progressing in GBIC.
When this was going on, Vaghela got a call from various IRDA and IGMS officers who ensured to provide his money back and the retired cop continued to give them money in hope of getting his entire money.
These fake IRDA and IGMS officers took Rs 16.27 lakh from Vaghela.
By then, Vaghela realized that he might have been cheated and approached Gujarat insurance ombudsman in July 2016 but this was about to become anther ordeal for him.
He said that he was told to contact the ombudsman office in Delhi from where various “fake officers” in garbs of different charges kept taking money from him.
Between July 2016 and January 2021, he paid them Rs 68.33 lakh.
Finally, one of the officers of the ombudsman switched off his phone and rest of the 48 accused also went incommunicado on January 2021.
After this, he approached cops with his complaint.