Cyber fraudsters cite ‘terror links’ to target senior citizens

BHOPAL: Senior citizens in Madhya Pradesh and Rajasthan are facing a new and highly unsettling cyber-fraud tactic, with criminals impersonating anti-terror investigators, placing victims under a so-called “digital arrest”, and extorting huge sums by falsely accusing them of involvement in terror funding.

In Bhopal, the fear triggered by such calls has already claimed a life. Sixty-eight-year-old advocate Shiv Kumar Verma recently died by suicide at his home. A suicide note, purportedly penned by him, revealed the possibility of him being targeted by cyber fraudsters “by threatening stringent action against him for funding the April 22 Pahalgam attack.”