Parents in Karnataka’s Mangaluru coastal city have reported receiving threatening and blackmail calls demanding huge ransoms for the release of their first-year pre-university college students. The callers claimed the students had been kidnapped or arrested in gang-rape cases.
The police, who have booked a case, said that parents started receiving the threats on Tuesday afternoon. “Parents started receiving calls claiming that their children had been either held in a gang-rape case or kidnapped. The callers, who spoke in Hindi, demanded Rs 5 lakh to release the students or to clear their names in the cases,” a police officer said.
The officer noted that the calls were made from the numbers +923354533015 and +48699532787. “Many of the parents panicked because the Truecaller app showed the numbers as belonging to the Central Bureau of Investigation and even displayed images of uniformed police officers,” the officer added.
When parents contacted colleges, they were relieved to learn that their children were attending classes as usual.
The police suspect that someone with access to student and parent details from the colleges was behind the calls.
Commissioner of Police Anupam Agarwal stated that the cyber police are investigating the origin of the calls. He advised parents not to panic, to avoid answering unknown international calls, and to report any suspicious calls to the nearest police station or directly to 1930.
