Balasaheb Thackeray's Grandson Aaishvary Thackeray Loses ₹19,638 In Online Banking Fraud; Oshiwara Police Register FIR

Mumbai: Aaishvary Thackeray, 30, grandson of late Shiv Sena chief Balasaheb Thackeray, lost Rs 19,638 in an online fraud. The Oshiwara police have registered an FIR against an unidentified person.

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Aaishvary is an actor and resides with his mother, Smita Thackeray, 66, and grandmother, Kunda Chitre, 90, at Windsor Grand Residency in Andheri West. He holds a savings account with Axis Bank and uses it for his daily expenses.

According to the police, Aaishvary claimed that he had neither clicked on any suspicious links nor responded to messages from unknown numbers. However, he still lost money in the online fraud.

As per the FIR copy accessed by the FPJ, on October 30, at around 1.30 am, he received a notification from the bank informing him that Rs 307 had been debited from his account. At 1.38 am, he received another notification stating that Rs 15,511 had been debited. He received one more debit alert shortly afterwards. A total of Rs 19,638 was debited from his account between 1.30 am and 1.40 am.

Aaishvary realised that he had been a victim of online fraud and approached the police. The police registered a case on October 30 under Section 318(4) (cheating) and other relevant provisions of the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita (BNS), along with a relevant section of the Information Technology Act.

Advocate (Dr) Prashant Mali, a cyber and privacy law expert, said, "In certain cases, fraudsters may exploit vulnerabilities in banking applications, payment gateways or authentication systems. The victim may only become aware of the incident when the debit alert arrives on their phone. Therefore, the absence of a suspicious link or an unknown phone call does not establish that the customer's device or banking credentials were never compromised. Equally, it does not automatically establish negligence on the customer's part, however educated he may be."

"There are several possible attack vectors. These include compromised debit or credit card details through skimming or merchant-side data breaches, SIM swapping or eSIM takeover, malware or spyware already present on a device, stolen banking credentials obtained through earlier data breaches, and unauthorised access to payment infrastructure," Advocate Mali added.

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