The High Court order came on a petition moved by Reliance Industries.
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The Delhi High Court has directed the Delhi Police Cyber Cell to investigate a scratch card scam carried out by “unscrupulous individuals” using the names ‘AJIO’ and ‘AJIO Online Shopping Pvt. Limited’.
The order by Justice Prathiba M. Singh on September 6 came on a petition by Reliance Industries Ltd. (RIL), which owns the e-commerce platform AJIO.
Seeking to protect the trademark ‘AJIO’, its logo and other formative marks, RIL submitted that it learnt of several persons fraudulently having sent various communications under the name and style ‘AJIO Online Shopping Pvt. Ltd.’, under the address ‘City Tower Complex Sasthitala Lane Atghara, New Town Kolkata, West Bengal-Bengal’.
According to these communications, recipients were led to believe that they had won prize money to the tune of ₹7,50,000-₹10,00,000 through scratch card coupons. These letters asked the recipients to claim the prize by following some instructions.
However, RIL said it discovered that the scammers asked these unsuspecting recipients to deposit sums, usually in the range of ₹5,000, under the garb of payment of advance government taxes and processing fees.
“Upon further investigation, it was revealed that the persons who were carrying out these fraudulent and illegal activities were using various mobile numbers and bank accounts to receive the deposits,” it said.
Taking note of the submission, Justice Singh ordered the immediate freezing of the bank accounts used by the scammers and called for complete statements of these from inception till date, including KYC details and any other information available with the respective banks.
The High Court also directed telecom service providers to immediately block all the mobile numbers used by the scammers, as provided by RIL, and find the identity of the individuals who had registered the mobile numbers.
“The court is convinced that this appears to be a large-scale operation carried out by unscrupulous individuals with the intention of collecting money under the name of ‘AJIO’ and ‘AJIO Online Shopping Pvt. Ltd.’,” Justice Singh remarked.
“The letters and the scratch cards, etc., are so convincing that any customer or recipient would be unable to distinguish between the plaintiff’s (RIL) communications and those of the said entity or person,” she added.