KOCHI: The father of a Class 12 student in Thiruvananthapuram got the shock of his life when he came to know that his son’s photograph and other details were being used in a crowdfunding platform to raise funds for hormone replacement therapy. He checked the portal, ‘www.milaap.org’, and, sure enough, it had a profile with his son’s photograph, seeking to raise Rs 1.4 lakh.
The man alerted the police. A probe revealed the involvement of a racket based in Uttar Pradesh. A team from the Cyber Crime police station in Thiruvananthapuram traced the bank accounts provided in the profile and identified Pratiksha Sharma of Agra as one of the alleged fraudsters. Further probe led the police to two other accused, Mukesh Choudhary and Karthikeyan Malhothra.
“A detailed probe is on. We have sent summons and will interrogate the accused,” said the officer. The police found that Choudhary allegedly used Malhotra’s PAN number to run the campaign using the student’s photograph. As per the police, the money was collected in two bank accounts in the name of Malhothra and Sharma.
One of the accounts was of Wells Fargo Bank in the US and the other of a leading new generation bank in India. “We are examining the reason why the accused chose the boy’s details,” said the officer. The police said Sharma had contacted him on social media to collect his details and shared her bank account information to the other two accused to collect the fund using the boy’s details.
The senior officer said the fraudsters ran the campaign “support rosetta” to collect money through www.milaap. org. “Sharma also ran a campaign on another social media platform mentioning the boy’s name as Karthikeyan Malhothra and quoting a PAN number while claiming to be his guardian,” said the officer. spurred by steely grit, Sreeshankar leaps to silver K S Bijimol and Sreeparvathy S Murali and M Sreeshankar DIAMOND LEAGUE
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