Mumbai judge loses Rs 1.2 lakh after debit card gets cloned
On February 4, a first information report was filed at Mumbai's Kurla police station in response to a complaint from the Metropolitan Magistrate. After updating his passbook in January of this year, the judge uncovered the fraud.
FollowA Mumbai judge has filed a complaint stating that his debit card was cloned and that money totalling 1.2 lakh was removed from his pay account on various occasions over a year. On February 4, a first information report was filed at Mumbai's Kurla police station in response to a complaint from the Metropolitan Magistrate. After updating his passbook in January of this year, the judge uncovered the fraud. To his complete amazement, 1.2 lakh in transactions had gone unaccounted for.
These purchases were allegedly performed at ATMs in various locations every month since January 2021 after the judge's debit card was supposedly duplicated. Based on his allegation, an FIR was filed under Sections 66C (identity theft) and 66D (cheating by personation by using computer resources) of the Information Technology Act, as well as Sections 419 (cheating by personation) and 420 (cheating and dishonestly inducing delivery of property) of the Indian Penal Code.
In 2020, Bharti Airtel CEO Gopal Vittal warned users about the rising number of cyber-frauds in the country via email, urging subscribers to be on the lookout for such incidents, which are becoming "alarmingly widespread." He cited a recent incident in which a fraudster impersonating an Airtel executive tricked a user into supplying a customer's bank details to transfer a big quantity of money. The fraudster attempted to contact the customer while purporting to update the Know Your Customer (KYC) form.
Meanwhile, in order to increase data security, the RBI issued guidelines in March 2020 indicating that shops would not be allowed to store card information on their websites. It released new laws in September 2021, giving firms till the end of the year to comply while also giving them the option to tokenize. The Reserve Bank of India has demanded that by January 1, 2022, all firms in India remove all credit and debit card data from their systems.
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