Pratiksha Nanasaheb Kale, a 2024 batch Indian Forest Service (IFS) officer, has fallen victim to a cyber fraud.
Kale, who secured second rank in the IFS exam, is undergoing training at Indira Gandhi National Forest Academy in Dehradun.
According to the compliant filed at the police station, Kale had received a new credit card of ICICI bank in February 15, 2025.
On the evening of March 25, she received a call from the alleged fraudster, who impersonated as customer care executive of the bank.
The modus operandi
The fraudster asked her to pay the service charge after the completion of one month of the credit card service.
The IFS officer denied paying any charge saying that no device charge is applicable on her credit card.
The fraudster told her that service charge will not be applicable only after setting up of the credit limit.
“You need to set up credit limit for exemption of service charge,” the fraudster told Kale.
The conversation raised suspicion but the fraudster convinced Kale saying that there is no need to share OTP, PIN etc to anyone.
Money goes with change in settings
However, the fraudster, offered assistance for setting up credit limit online, which Kale accepted to do.
The fraudster asked her to open the i-mobile app and change different settings. During the course an online limit of Rs 98,000 was set.
The fraudster told IFS officer that she will soon receive a call. The call rang in but the officer could not pick that. After some time she received a message that Rs 98,000 was spent on her credit card.
Seeing the message, the officer panicked and called back the fraudster, who said that there was nothing to worry and the transaction will be reversed. But after some time, she stared getting call from bank for the deposition of Rs 98,000 spent on her credit card.
After repeated calls, she came know that she had been defrauded and then she filed an FIR with the police. The case is being investigated by the cyber crime department.
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