While the rest of us deck up our homes or offices, or organise grand ceremonies in our localities for the Ram Temple inauguration in Ayodhya, cybercriminals have been flooding the internet with scams in the name of Lord Ram.
Officials from the Maharashtra Cyber department have, over the last several weeks, tracked a wide range of attempts to defraud citizens by exploiting their religious sentiments. The most common modus operandi observed so far is through messages accompanied by QR Codes, seeking donations for the Shri Ram Janmabhoomi Teerth Kshetra trust in Ayodhya. Citizens are being lured into paying supposed donations by scanning the QR codes and sending amounts of their choice.
Meanwhile, the police have also observed several messages circulating on social media platforms, offering entry into the temple in exchange for a price which, too, have been found to be fraudulent. Further, bogus several social media accounts and websites in the name of the trust have also come to light, officials said. Superintendent of Police Sanjay Shintre, Maharashtra Cyber, said that the inauguration event and all related activities are being managed only by the government and the Trust, and no other players are involved.
“As of now, there is not even an official website for live streaming the event by the Trust. Nor have any QR Codes been created or sent out by them or by the government. Any such claims should be taken to be scams, and citizens can report attempts or crimes at their nearest police station, or through the National Cyber Crime Reporting Portal,” said Shintre. The offline variety of crime, meanwhile, involved people selling laddoos claiming that they are ‘Bhagwan Ram ka prasad.” “So far, we have not received any complaint from anyone who has actually fallen prey to any of these cybercrimes. Still, we urge the people to be aware while browsing through the internet,” said Shintre.
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