I
have been to Shirdi Saibaba Mandir for few times. I tried to visit recently again, and
it led to a near-miss with a cyber fraud attempt.
Since
I wanted to travel alone, I booked a bus ticket to Shirdi online. The bus
operator’s online booking website mentioned about the terms and conditions, and they
suggested to book VIP Passes in order to finish the darshan fast. In my past
travels, I had always gone through the regular route, hence I thought of trying
the VIP Pass this time. Shirdi Saibaba Sansthan has a website through which I
booked VIP Pass for Rs 200. The next day, I got a call from the bus operator
who told me that they have cancelled the trip and returning my booking
amount since they have not found enough bookings for the day. Since I was not
traveling now, I thought to cancel my VIP Pass too. I went to the same website
and cancelled my VIP Pass booking. The website displayed a message saying they
have cancelled the pass but won’t be returning any money since it was
non-refundable. It sounded weird given that the temple is one of the richest in
the world, but since there was no option, I decided to accept it.
Several
weeks since the mentioned episode, I got a phone call from a caller who introduced himself
from ‘CCAvenue’, which I knew was a company running payment gateway. He said
that I had booked an online aarti and puja at Saibaba temple, but the booking
amount had got refunded to my bank account by mistake and I needed to return
the money back to the company. The guy who was calling was an educated guy speaking
in good English and he was well versed with the technicalities. I told him that
as per my knowledge no money was refunded to me as per the policy of the booking
website. But he insisted that the money was refunded by mistake to my account.
He said, “otherwise, how would I know about your booking”? I replied, “because these days, each bank or financial transaction as well as KYC document is being sold to frauds
in our country”. The guy’s voice saw only a small dip and he started arguing
with me that it was my moral duty to return the money to the institution.
He asked for permission to send me an email with details of how to
transfer the money to his company. I told him in reply that first I
would verify my bank statement to confirm whether I got any
money refunded or not, and then I would decide on the next action. He said it was fine, and he would
call me later again.
First
thing I did was to report and block his number. Then I checked my bank statement
online and found that no such refund had ever taken place after the VIP pass
booking date. The guy was clearly a cyber fraud.
While
I got saved since I did not trust the random guy calling me, not everyone is as
lucky. As our economy is becoming more and more digital by the day, frauds of
many kinds are also increasing. Most of the victims remain silent and most of
the crimes never get reported. A few cases we hear about are only a tip of the
iceberg. Government and public regulators are totally ineffective and
inadequate in stopping the flood of these crimes, and the final responsibility falls
on our shoulders. Many times, it feels that the non-digital world was safer,
but in true sense, it was not safe too; just the modes of crime were
different. I don’t know how many years it will take for the government and
regulators to get a grip on the situation, but currently, it feels like we can
be safe only by taking extreme precautions at our individual level.
-
Rahul
