BHOPAL: An ASHA worker in Madhya Pradesh’s Jabalpur district suffered mental trauma and financial loss after cyber fraudsters lured her with a fake lottery, manipulated her with arrest threats, and pushed her to fake her own kidnapping.In March 2025, Jabalpur-resident 36-year-old Pushpalata Jharia got a call from a foreign VPN number, where the caller informed her about having won gold, diamond and a lottery prize worth Rs 10 lakh. To get the prize, she was first asked to deposit some money online, and then the fraudsters started contacting her regularly.A few days later, the fraudsters said that the person assigned to deliver the lottery prize had been arrested. Since her Aadhaar card copy was with him, they warned, she could also face arrest soon.Caught between fear and greed, the woman, whose husband does small jobs and the couple have two children, sent four lakh rupees online. When the relatives came to know about such a big transaction, they questioned the woman, but the fraudsters had cautioned her that if she told anyone, the reward would be cancelled, which made her remain silent.On April 23, she went to her parents’ home. Two days later she left saying that she was going to Bargi, but then went missing. Her family lodged a missing report with the local police on May 4.Swayed by the fraudsters, the woman kept wandering from Jabalpur to Mumbai, then Surat and finally to Delhi. She spent the nights at railway stations, ate free food, and kept sending more money to the fraudsters by working wherever possible.Her ordeal worsened when the fraudsters instructed her to fake her own kidnapping. She recorded a video in tears and sent it to them, which they forwarded to her husband on June 1, demanding Rs 2 lakh as ransom. They threatened that failure to pay would result in her being killed and her body dismembered and dumped in a forest.Worried about her daughter’s life, her mother filed a habeas corpus petition in the Madhya Pradesh High Court. On the court’s direction, the police deployed four teams for the search. During this time, the woman’s phone was stolen, but she called her relatives from someone else’s phone, which gave her location in Greater Noida. On Monday (June 16), the police team recovered her safely from there.Though reunited with her family after a month and a half, the woman remains mentally disturbed, experiencing dizziness, trembling, and delusional belief that the fraudsters are innocent and will still reward her. Police have initiated her counselling and launched a search for the cyber criminals.The victim’s sister-in-law, Asha Jharia, while recounting what happened over the last few months, said, “when she was constantly asking for money from relatives and villagers, we asked her why she needed money. She said that she is helping a relative. Once she even sent money from my daughter’s phone. We explained many times that when there is no money in your own house, then why are you helping others, but she was not ready to accept.”Pushpalata’s college-going daughter, Poonam, said, “My mother got a call in March, in which a reward was promised, which included gold and diamond jewellery and cash. In return, she was asked for five lakh rupees. Slowly, mother kept giving money. Later, one day, a message came about kidnapping, which scared all of us. We contacted the police. The last call came early this month, saying that ‘We’ve left your mother in Delhi, go and pick her up.’ Since then, the calls have stopped. She’s back home, but still thinks that she will get the reward.”According to Circle SP (Bargi-Jabalpur), A Mishra, under whose supervision the case is being investigated, four to five police teams had been deployed to trace the woman. “Wherever the call came from, our team reached there, but in each case, the woman had borrowed a phone from an unknown person to make the call,” he said.The investigation later revealed that those whose phones were used were innocent and had merely offered help. Mishra added that the situation worsened when the fraudsters sent a video of the woman’s fake kidnapping to her family, which was traced to a foreign IP address. “This country is not cooperating with us these days,” he said.The case took a more disturbing turn when threatening audio messages with abusive language began to arrive, warning that the woman would be killed. “When we recovered her in Delhi, she was sitting alone. We are counselling her because she still has not come out of the delusion. She believes she has not been conned and that she will still get the reward,” he added.
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