A woman in Agra, Uttar Pradesh tragically passed away from a heart attack after an extortion call with false claims. On 30th September, Malti Verma (58) received a WhatsApp call from a man acting as a police official. He claimed that her daughter had been taken into custody in connection with a sex trafficking case. He threatened to release an explicit video of her daughter if Rs 1 lakh was not paid to him. The woman told her son about the incident and asked him to send the money right away for the sake of her daughter.
The man claimed that he called her to make sure the family would not have to endure the anguish of having their daughter involved in a case involving a sex racket and forwarded a number to which the amount was to be transferred. Her son, Divyanshu, grew sceptical after hearing about the incident and discovered that the caller was a Pakistani who was impersonating a police officer to demand money from their family.
He revealed, “My mother taught in a government girls junior high school in Agra’s Achnera. After she got the call from the man, she panicked and called me. I asked her for the number from which she had received the call. When I checked the number, I found that it had a +92 (country code for Pakistan) prefix and told her it was a scam. She was still very anxious and started feeling unwell.”
Furthermore, he informed her that he had spoken to his sister, who was attending college and doing well. However, the woman’s health was severely impacted by the occurrence. It was around 4:00 pm when she got home from school and began to feel unwell. She was taken to a nearby hospital but was pronounced dead. Divyanshu stated, “I reassured her and also told her that I had spoken to my sister, who was in college and was fine. My mother’s health kept deteriorating, however, and when she came back from school, she said she was feeling some pain. We gave her something to drink but things got worse and she died.”
Malti Verma’s daughter said, “I got a call from my brother who asked me where I was. He told me to give him a video call after I informed him that I was in college.”
In a video that went viral online, people were seen racing to the woman’s house to assist after she had a heart attack. They carried her out to a car so that she could be taken to the hospital.
उत्तर प्रदेश के जिला आगरा में साइबर अपराधियों ने एक महिला टीचर की जान ले ली। उन्होंने कॉल करके कहा कि आपकी बेटी सेक्स रैकेट में पकड़ी गई है। मालती वर्मा ये बात बर्दाश्त नहीं कर पाईं और हार्टअटैक से मौत हो गई। @madanjournalist pic.twitter.com/J9dpYFoAqC
— Sachin Gupta (@SachinGuptaUP) October 3, 2024
Malti Verma received a call on her WhatsApp account at approximately 12 pm while she was at her school, according to the Agra police. The man with the khaki outfit and peak cap informed her that he was a police officer and her daughter was caught in a sex racket. He then hung up. “Fifteen minutes later, Verma received another call and the man told her that if she wanted to save her daughter and the family, she would have to deposit Rs 1 lakh in a specific account,” according to Additional Commissioner of Police Mayank Tiwari.
When the woman’s daughter did not answer her phone, she called her son instead. “At around 2.30 pm, she returned home and saw her daughter. By 2:45, her condition worsened and died 15 minutes after she reached home. This was the first such case in Agra,” the official conveyed.
He mentioned that the family submitted a complaint on 3rd October and added, “The family has complained that Ms Verma died of a heart attack. The cause for this, her husband has said, was that she had received a call stating that her daughter had been caught in a sex racket and the caller had demanded Rs 1 lakh from her. She was cremated on Tuesday (1st October) and we received the complaint today. We are investigating the number from which the call came and will take action.”
