Bengaluru man duped as Priyank Kharge’s aide, cheats a govt engineer

In a shocking incident, a woman government executive engineer in Bengaluru was duped by a man who allegedly posed as an assistant to Karnataka IT minister Priyank Kharge. The accused extorted ₹80,000 from the engineer and promised her that he will help her to get the posting.
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According to reports, Dr Nagraj, a special officer on duty to Priyank Kharge, filed a complaint at Vidhana Soúdha police station. The complaint said that Kavya, an executive engineer in the Karnataka government, was reached out by a man named Raghunandan on October 14. He introduced himself as an assistant to Kharge and said that he would help her with her long-pending posting. He initially demanded ₹2 lakh for the posting.
However, he threatened Kavya and took ₹80,000 from her between October 15 and 16. Priyank Kharge’s office responded to the issue and alerted police about fraudsters looting people by pretending to have connections with the minister.
A case was reportedly registered under BNS sections 204 (personating a public servant), 319 (cheating) and 351 (criminal intimidation), according to Deccan Herald. The suspect is yet to be arrested and police said that they are close to tracking down the accused.
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The fraudulent case took a steep rise in Karnataka as many people fell prey to the scamsters tactics. Prime Minister Narendra Modi also highlighted the issue and alerted people to be aware of fraudsters who aim to steal hard-earned money by posing as government officials.
In India, Victims lost ₹1,420.48 crore in trading scams, ₹222.58 crore in investment scams, and ₹13.23 crore in romance/dating scams, according to an Indian Express report which quoted Indian Cyber Crime Coordination Centre (I4C) Chief Executive Officer Rajesh Kumar as saying.
There were 7.4 lakh complaints made between January 1 and April 30, 2024, with 15.56 lakh complaints received in the entirety of 2023, 9.66 lakh complaints in 2022, and 4.52 lakh in 2021, the report further said.