The Azad Maidan police have arrested a 34-year-old Uttar Pradesh resident for allegedly creating a fake WhatsApp profile of Bombay High Court Chief Justice Dipankar Datta and using it to try and swindle money out of court employees. The accused has also allegedly tried similar crimes in Nagpur and Aurangabad.
According to the Azad Maidan police, the accused has been identified as Maikulal Diwakar, a resident of Bareilly in UP. The police said that investigations were initiated into the matter on June 26 this year, after an employee with the Administrative department of the Bombay HC received a WhatsApp message from an unknown number and registered a complaint.
"The employee got a message asking if he had heard of Amazon gift cards, followed by another message in which the sender instructed him to buy gift cards and share their scratch code numbers. The complainant checked the profile of the sender and saw that it was in the name of Chief Justice Dipankar Datta, along with his photograph as the display picture," said an officer with the Azad Maidan police station.
The police registered an FIR and obtained details of the number from which the messages had come, which pointed the investigating team towards Bareilly. The police left for UP while at the same time continuously tracking Diwakar's location. Officers said that the tracking process proved to be harder than usual, as Diwakar wasn't continuously using the SIM card used in the offence.
"It was only when we picked him up that we realised that he had two SIM cards, of which one was only used while committing the crime, and was taken out of the handset the rest of the time. We have also found some instructional videos on his phone about how to clone WhatsApp accounts and SIM cards, and suspect that he may have used this knowledge while committing the offence," the officer said.
Diwakar was subsequently placed under arrest and charged with cheating and impersonating a government servant under the Indian Penal Code, along with relevant sections of the Information Technology Act.
Senior police inspector Bhushan Belnekar, Azad Maidan police station, confirmed the arrest.
"The accused consulted the court directory to access contact numbers of court employees. He had tried something similar with employees of the Nashik and Aurangabad bench of the HC," Belnekar said.
