Senior IPS officer Ashit Mohan Prasad falls prey to cyber criminals

BENGALURU: Two months ago a man belonging to Kolkata had been arrested for allegedly siphoning off Rs 2 lakh from the senior IPS officer Ashit Mohan Prasad, who is the head of the Internal Security Division (ISD).

Sources at the Criminal Investigation Department (CID) cyber crime police station had said that the accused, Kishore Kumar, is an electrician. Sleuths have traced him back to Kolkata with the help of the mobile number which he had used to call Prasad and collected his debit card details. “We have brought him to Bengaluru and are probing his modus operandi, his associates and involvement in other such cases,” a police officer said.

As per the police, Prasad, the DGP of ISD, had been targeted by cyber criminals who had gotten away with Rs 2 lakh within a span of minutes after collecting his card details. Prasad had registered a complaint with the cyber crime police station.

According to the sources of the CID, Prasad had received a phone call at around 3PM on the 15th of October and the caller, who had claimed to be a executive of the bank, told Prasad two of his debit cards will be expiring soon and he was asked to reactivate them. He later shared the details of one of his debit card with the person on the call.

Minutes late, he received another call from an ‘executive’, with whom he had exchanged the details of his second card. Then, he received a text message on his cellphone that Rs 1 lakh each from both of his accounts have been debited. At 4PM, he realised that he had been cheated. “I was in a hurry to leave on account of Dasara and the person who called me sought my debit card details. Out of sheer negligence, I shared the information,” Prasad had told a source.