Chandrashekar said cyber criminals hacked his phone and created an account, where they conducted a transaction without his knowledge.
Chandrashekar MK, the man who is jailed in Saudi Arabia's Riyadh
A 33-year-old man from Karnataka’s Dakshina Kannada district has been jailed for nearly nine months now at a prison in Saudi Arabia’s capital city of Riyadh after online scammers allegedly created a bank account in his name and routed the proceeds of a cybercrime — around 22,000 riyals, or nearly ₹4.88 lakh at current rates — to Pakistan.
Chandrashekar MK, a native of Aithoor village in the Puttur taluk in the Dakshina Kannada district, had been working with the Al Fanar company for over eight years at that time.
He had been working on the production line as a quality controller at Al Fanar’s ceramic manufacturing division, Chandrashekar’s sister Punitha told South First.
She also recalled that her brother came back from Saudi Arabia last in April 2022.
According to Punitha, her brother was arrested by the Riyadh police in November 2022 and has since been in prison. The information came through to Punitha from one of Chandrashekar’s friends named Arun, who is from Kodagu.
“Last year, my brother had gone to purchase a mobile phone and a SIM card at a shop in Riyadh, where they took his biometric data — thumb impression and other fingerprints — not once but twice, stating that the inputs were not clear the first time,” said Punitha.
“A day later, he received a message in Arabic on his phone which seemed like a hyperlink, which he clicked, not knowing the language. He then received a call asking for his SIM card details and was told that his SIM had a problem that could be rectified only if he shared an OTP (a One-Time Password) that was sent to his phone,” she added.
“Without any suspicion, Chandrashekar shared the OTP with the caller, who said that the problem was rectified. A few days went by, and the Riyadh police came knocking on Chandrashekhar’s doors,” she said.
Chandrashekar was apparently told by the police that his bank account had been used for money-laundering, and arrested him.
“When he explained to the police that he had shared his OTP with a caller, the cops told him that it was his mistake and asked him to explain himself in court,” said Punitha.
According to her, his phone was hacked soon after he shared the OTP, and the cybercriminals opened a bank account in his name where 22,000 riyals belonging to a woman in Riyadh were transferred.
That amount was then transferred to a bank account in Pakistan, she added.
The aggrieved woman reportedly approached the Riyadh police, who registered a case and found that the money had come into Chandrashekhar’s bank account. They arrested him since the money had also gone from his account to Pakistan.
Chandrashekar’s friends engaged a lawyer in Riyadh to fight the case. However, his family in the Ayithoor village are a worried lot as they also know of the case of another Karnataka man — Mangalurean Shailesh Kumar — who has been convicted and sentenced to 15 years in prison for posting derogatory comments about Islam and the Saudi Arabian King on Facebook.
In that case, too, Kumar’s family had alleged that his Facebook account had been hacked and someone impersonated him to land him in trouble.
Punitha approached a civil rights activist in Mangaluru, Sridhar Gowda, who helped her communicate the matter to Union Minister of State for Agriculture and Farmers’ Welfare Shobha Karandlaje, who gave assurances that she would take it up with Externals Affairs Minister S Jaishankar and expedite Chandrashekar’s release.
Meanwhile, on Saturday, 19 August, Karnataka BJP president Nalin Kumar Kateel — also a Member of Parliament (MP) from the Dakshina Kannada constituency — wrote a letter to Jaishankar requesting his intervention seeking the release of Chandrashekar.
Punitha also told South First that Chandrashekar’s friends in Riyadh are helping him out and are also in the process of crowdfunding to raise 22,000 Riyals so that they could pay the woman her lost money and request her to withdraw her complaint.
