Police have registered separate cyber fraud cases where two residents were allegedly duped of a combined ₹15 lakh; one victim was tricked into installing a fraudulent application and the other was lured by fake insurance officials.

In the first case, a 51-year-old Indo-Tibetan Border Police (ITBP) personnel from Surajpur allegedly lost ₹2 lakh after installing an APK file named “PNB.apk”. On June 19, a caller posing as a PNB employee offered to help him obtain a credit card and sent the application. After installing it, three unauthorised transactions of ₹80,000, ₹69,000 and ₹80,000 were made through his ICICI Bank credit card for purchases on Zepto Marketplace.

In the second case, a 41-year-old resident of Karanpur village allegedly lost ₹13 lakh after fraudsters lured him. Singh received a call on June 29 from a person who claimed his insurance policy’s documents were pending and offered to arrange a refund of his accumulated amount. The fraudsters allegedly persuaded him to transfer money to different bank accounts, assuring him the amount would be refunded with interest. Between July 9 and September 5, Singh made 12 National Electronic Funds Transfer (NEFT) transfers amounting to ₹13 lakh. He realised he had been cheated after being asked to pay another ₹4 lakh.

Separate FIRs have been registered under Sections 318(4) (cheating) and 61(2) (criminal conspiracy) of the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita (BNS).