Overview
- An FIR in Chandigarh says retired Col Rajbir Singh Duggal, 82, lost ₹12.05 lakh after downloading an APK sent over WhatsApp during a courier pickup inquiry that began with a Google-searched number.
- The complaint notes transfers to multiple accounts after the phone was compromised, with amounts including ₹5 lakh to Ranju Chakraborty, ₹3 lakh and ₹2 lakh to Kamal Mandal, ₹2 lakh to Soumajit Dutta, and ₹5,000 to a Digital Rupee wallet.
- Chandigarh Police registered a case at the Cyber Crime Police Station under BNS provisions for cheating, personation, forgery, and criminal conspiracy, and the victim also reported the fraud via the National Cyber Crime Portal.
- Officials describe a broader rise in APK-based scams, citing malware that exploits accessibility features to read OTPs, intercept notifications, mirror screens, deploy RATs, and exfiltrate credentials to command-and-control servers.
- In a separate Pune case reported by city police, a 57-year-old man lost ₹2.75 lakh in December after opening a fake RTO ‘traffic notice’ APK, prompting renewed advisories to install apps only from trusted stores, keep Play Protect on, disable unknown-source installs, verify messages, and report incidents via 1930 or cybercrime.gov.in.