Former Rajya Sabha MP Naresh Gujral, son of late Prime Minister Inder Kumar Gujral, has been defrauded of ₹7.68 crore through a sophisticated WhatsApp impersonation scam. The fraud unfolded between June 12 and June 16, with cyber criminals hacking Gujral's WhatsApp account and creating a fake profile using his picture to trick his company's Chief Finance Officer into transferring funds. According to police reports, the money was sent through four real-time gross settlement (RTGS) transactions and was routed into three to four accounts. The first transaction alone was for approximately ₹1.5 crore, with three more transactions requested and executed in the same manner over the following days.
Delhi Police's Intelligence Fusion and Strategic Operations (IFSO) unit has managed to freeze ₹4.28 crore across various bank accounts by following the money trail. Commissioner of Police (IFSO) Vinit Kumar confirmed that "an amount of ₹4.28 crore out of the total defrauded amount of ₹7.68 crore has been marked as lien/hold in various banks. Efforts are being made to apprehend the persons involved in the fraud." As per police reports, investigators found that ₹4 crore of the defrauded amount has already been marked as a lien or held in various banks, with the unusual pattern that a significant portion of the money remained in the banking system rather than being cashed out or converted into cryptocurrency, which allowed for relatively quick tracing and freezing of funds. The remaining ₹3.6 crore still requires recovery.
The fraud came to light on June 16 when the employee who had been corresponding with the impersonator grew suspicious and reached out to Diksha, Gujral's daughter. The employee told her about the money her father had supposedly been asking him to transfer. Diksha, alarmed that her father had apparently developed an urgent need for such a large sum, asked him directly about the transactions. Gujral told her he had never contacted the employee or requested any such transfers. The family immediately suspected fraud and approached the police, with an FIR registered on June 16 and the case given to IFSO, Delhi Police's special cybercrime investigation unit. The case represents the latest in a line of high-profile cyber frauds targeting senior Indian industrialists and public figures.
Formerly a Rajya Sabha member from 2007 to 2022, Gujral currently runs a textiles and apparel manufacturing company in south Delhi's Okhla. According to police reports, the fraud was discovered when the bank flagged the unusual activity given the huge sum involved. Singh, the Chief Finance Officer, believed the money transfers to be a part of routine business transactions for the company. The bank's intervention proved significant in helping investigators trace where the money had gone, though it did not stop the fraud at the time. The case highlights the importance of immediate verification of suspicious requests through phone calls rather than relying solely on chat messages, and never transferring funds based purely on chat messages.
According to cyber security experts, consumers can protect themselves from financial cybercrime through several preventive measures. These include relying only on verified apps, enabling Multi-Factor Authentication to keep password clues private, and using advanced endpoint security tools to protect against malware and cyber-attacks. Additionally, maintaining offline backup of data is recommended as good practice. The case highlights the importance of immediate verification of suspicious requests through phone calls rather than relying solely on chat messages, and never transferring funds or clicking unsolicited links based purely on chat messages.
