Bhubaneswar: Former inspector general of Uttar Pradesh police D K Panda, who hails from Odisha, allegedly lost a whopping Rs Rs 381 crore to cybercriminals.
A case in this connection has been registered at Dhoomanganj police station of Prayagraj.
In his complaint dated October 25, Panda, who earlier created a stir calling himself ‘Doosri Radha‘, alleged that he received a Whatsapp voice call from Nicosia, Cyprus, at 3.25 pm and the caller, who identified himself as Arav Sharma from Rajasthan, threatened him in abusive language. “He works in CySEC, Cyprus and has jurisdiction all over the European Union. I have never met him,” he said.
The former IPS officer said that the man came in contact with him online through one Rahul Gupta in the finance department of Fimnix Group at London. “I came in contact with Rahul online. I was doing online trading in Finnixgroup.com in USD, helped by Vineet Goel. I made a good profit. I withdrew the profits to, but the money was not credited to my bank accounts in Prayagraj,” he said in his complaint.
Panda was instead asked to pay for tax, conversion, liquidity, transaction fee and other things. “Due to some problem in Finninxgroup, Arav Sharma of CySEC came in picture. He recovered my entire profit money of about Rs 381 crore,” he said.
This made him realise that he might have been defrauded.
Arav became abusive when he declined his demand for Rs 8 lakh, the 1971-batch officer claimed.
According to Panda, he threatened to use his passport, Aadhaar card, PAN and other documents and implicate him in terrorist funding activities. “I asked him to give his official photo ID card, Aadhaar card, bank details and the likes but he did not give. I have some doubt about his identity and official status,” he said.
He again received a call from a man called Deepak, who identified himself as Arav’s assistant, at 4.26 pm, advising him to talk to the latter to avoid any problem. “This clearly shows that Arav Sharma has links with terror groups. Deepak also has knowledge about it,” Panda added.
Citing terror links, he demanded that the investigation be carried out by the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) or National Investigation Agency (NIA).
Notably, Panda had transformed himself into a woman to become Krishna’s second Radha in 1991. He used to wear anklets, a nose ring and vermilion and covered his head with a dupatta. He was charged with breaching police code and took voluntary retirement from the services in November 2005 after his wife moved court seeking divorce.
(With inputs from PTI)
