Manas Dasgupta
NEW DELHI, Oct 17: Further widening its investigation into the “digital arrest” fraud, the Enforcement Directorate (ED) has made the sixth arrest in a money-laundering investigation linked to an alleged pan-India cyber fraud and digital arrest case involving transactions worth ₹30,000 crore,” official sources said on Saturday.
The sources said Mukesh Kumar Pukhraj Jain alias Mukesh Bhai was taken into custody on Friday and was produced before a special Prevention of Money Laundering Act (PMLA) court in Panaji that sent him to ED custody for three days. Jain acted as an RTGS agent, arranging bank credits into the accounts of the cybercriminal network through brokers in exchange for a commission, the sources added.
The agency had said in a statement that its probe in the case began following the registration of an FIR by Goa Police on June 9, 2025, after a Goa-based woman was allegedly duped into transferring ₹2.60 crore between May 21, 2025, and June 2, 2025, into some “secret supervision accounts” by cyber fraudsters following her “digital arrest.”
Digital arrest is a cybercrime in which fraudsters, posing as law enforcement officials, threaten people through audio or video calls, virtually holding them hostage and pressuring them into transferring money online. The government has said digital arrest was non-existent in India and no official agency carry out such arrest and such crimes should be immediately reported to the national cyber helpline number 1930 or at the web portal cybercrime.gov.in.
The ED found that the money cheated from the Goa victim was put in 400 bank accounts, withdrawn in cash and then converted into foreign currency through RBI-licensed money changers. Agency officials had said the money trail led to an “inter-connected” network of commodity, trading, travel and forex entities which undertook banking transactions worth more than ₹27,850 crore and ₹2,904 crore deposited in cash, including ₹584.70 crore through 61,448 bulk note acceptance machine transactions at multiple locations in the country.
“The bank accounts of these entities have been identified across as many as 300 cyber fraud complaints and 163 FIRs filed by police and other law enforcement agencies across 20 States and Union Territories, involving an aggregate reported loss of ₹417.49 crore,” the ED said.
It conducted two rounds of searches in this case in Goa and Mumbai in July and the latest on August 21, seizing about ₹3.25 crore in cash. The probe found that shell or dummy companies named drivers and employees living in single-room accommodations as their directors, a classic modus operandi in such cases, according to the ED.
Earlier, the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) had targeted three major cases of “digital arrest” in which victims were coerced into transferring crores of rupees after being falsely told they were under police custody through video calls. Three accused were arrested in the initial move by the CBI after carrying out detailed scrutiny of bank records and digital account-access trails. The operation was aimed at tracing how the proceeds of crime moved and who ultimately benefited from it.
The three cases at the centre of the crackdown illustrated the scale of the racket. A BITS Pilani professor was kept under a fabricated “digital arrest” for three months and defrauded of ₹7.67 crore. In October 2023, the victim was contacted by a caller claiming to represent India’s telecom regulator, warning that her mobile phone number was linked to a cybercrime complaint. Persons posing as Mumbai police, Enforcement Directorate, and CBI officials then took over via Skype, falsely linking her to the money-laundering case involving Jet Airways founder Naresh Goyal. The victim was threatened with arrest unless she cooperated.
They claimed that a police warrant had been issued against her. For over three months, she was made to report her daily movements and, believing her funds needed “digital verification” as told by the fraudsters, the victim withdrew ₹7.67 crore through 42 transactions and deposited the money in various accounts as directed. She had also taken a loan of ₹80 lakh from banks to make the payments.
In the second case, using a similar modus operandi, a senior woman doctor in Gujarat’s Gandhinagar was targeted. She was kept under ‘digital arrest’ for over three months (March 15 to June 25) by scammers who posed as a telecom official, a police officer, public prosecutors, and a notary official. Using forged papers purportedly linked to the ED, the victim was convinced that she was under investigation. She was made to stay on constant video contact and share her live location at all times, including during travel. The fraudsters told her that assets worth about ₹20 crore needed to be “parked” pending investigation.
The victim broke fixed deposits, took loans, sold gold, and offloaded shares, transferring ₹19.24 crore to about 30 accounts. The police arrested one accused, Lalji Jayantibhai Baldaniya, whose account was also used to receive money, and suspected a Cambodia-based cybercrime syndicate link.
In February-March 2026, 81-year-old businessman Ajit Gopalkrishna Saraf from Belagavi was cheated of ₹15.45 crore over a six-week “digital arrest” scam. In his case, it began on February 5 with a caller posing as a CBI official, who accused him of having links with Mr Goyal. Another caller, projecting himself as a Reserve Bank of India (RBI) official, forced him to liquidate his fixed deposits and stock investments. The victim stayed isolated in his room for days and kept transferring the money on the scammers’ directions. The fraud came to light only when his son visited during the Ugadi festival.
Digital arrest scams have emerged as one of India’s most damaging cyber-fraud categories, mainly affecting elderly citizens. A government submission to the Supreme Court had earlier placed total losses from such scams at roughly ₹3,000 crore. Recognising the scale of the problem, the Supreme Court in December 2025 gave the CBI a free hand to probe not just the scams themselves but also the bankers and mule-account networks that enable them, with the Court declaring that “enough was enough.”
Since then, the Supreme Court has issued a series of interim directions, the latest in August 2026, as part of suo motu proceedings on “digital arrest” victims. The orders followed status reports from the Indian Cyber Crime Coordination Centre, which showed both progress and persistent gaps. The Grievance Redressal Mechanism now covers over 1.23 lakh bank branches across 69 banks, and a Money Restoration Mechanism spans 57 banks and all States and Union Territories, having restored about ₹18.05 crore across 36,290 cases so far.
The CBI, on its part, has registered many “digital arrest” cases, conducted multiple rounds of searches across several States, and made many arrests. In June 2026, the agency raided over 80 locations across 16 States in connection with more than 200 cases.