A 65-year-old man has been missing since last week after allegedly falling victim to an online extortion scam. Rakesh Jain, a resident of Vaishali, had been receiving extortion calls for the past three-four weeks, his daughter Nikita told ABP Live.
The family has lodged a complaint with the Dilshad Garden police, who they said have registered a missing person case. Jain, who works as an accountant at a private company, was last seen on November 10 in the Dilshad Garden area.
"My father went to office on November 10 in the morning and went missing around 3.30 pm. CCTV footage showed that he was last seen taking an auto outside his office in Dilshad Garden area," a worried Nikita said.
What has made the job more difficult for the police is the fact that Jain left his phone in his office before going “missing”. As per preliminary probe, the police have ruled out kidnapping as no ransom calls have been received by Jain's family, Nikita said.
After scanning Jain's call records, the police came to know that he had been receiving calls by scammers for the past few weeks and even made a payment of Rs 10,000 to them. Jain's family members said he did not tell them about the fake calls.
"Since my father was not tech savvy and does not use any UPI app, he paid the amount in cash to a friend and asked him to transfer the money. We only got to know all this after he went missing," said Nikita, who is a journalist.
"We think he fell prey to a scam where scammers do a video call and obscene videos are shown and then they blackmail you. He must have felt embarrased to share the incident with his family and also left his phone, worried that he might be traced," she added.
The call records showed that even after the payment was made, the extortionists were harassing him for more money, according to her.
Jain's family members have made an ardent appeal to him to return home.
"We just want that he returns safe. We hope he reads our message and comes back as this is not his fault. The police are with him and family is with him. People need to be aware of such scams so that no one faces such harassment," Nikita said.
The police are now trying to trace the auto and the money trail. They are also not being able to trace the details of the bank account where the money was deposited.
ACP Akshay Kumar Rastogi, who is leading the investigation, refused to divulge much details on the case.
"We have formed two-three police teams and they are trying to trace him. We are putting all our efforts in finding him and looking at all angles," the ACP told ABP Live.
In recent months, several sextortion incidents have come to light in the national capital. The modus operandi of the fraudsters in most cases include befriending gullible victims on Facebook and then luring them into conversations with nude images on messenger chats.
Then a request for video call is sent and obscene videos are shown to the victims. Simultaneously, the video call is recorded to blackmail the victim. Once the victim falls for the trap and pays the amount, more money is demanded and the cycle continues.