A cyber fraud racket that preyed on one of the most emotionally fraught decisions a family can make, adopting a child, has been busted by Delhi Police, with two accused arrested from Bareilly in Uttar Pradesh. The men allegedly posed as representatives of a legitimate adoption agency, built trust with prospective parents over weeks, and extracted money through a trail of forged NGO receipts and fabricated medical records. What began as a single complaint of ₹1.37 lakh lost has since opened into a wider investigation, with police suspecting the racket claimed more victims than the one who came forward.
A Search for a Child That Turned Into a Months-Long Con
The case surfaced after a 30-year-old woman from Delhi’s Burari searched online for adoption services and reached out to a number advertised for legal adoptions. The man who answered, identifying himself as Sachin, told her a baby boy would soon be available and assured her the entire process would be handled lawfully.
What followed, according to the complaint, was a slow drip of payments demanded under different pretexts, registration fees, booking charges, transportation costs and assorted administrative expenses. To keep the illusion intact, the accused allegedly sent forged NGO receipts along with fabricated ultrasound reports, documents specifically designed to make an unregulated, informal transaction look like a properly documented adoption in progress.
The deception unravelled only when the woman asked to meet the child’s biological mother. The accused reportedly began stalling before going silent altogether once the payments stopped coming in. Realising she had been cheated, she filed a complaint through the National Cyber Crime Reporting Portal, leading to an e-FIR at the Delhi Police Cyber Police Station.
Tracing the Trail From Nearly a Hundred Numbers to Two Arrests
Investigators reconstructed the fraud through bank account records, IP logs, call detail records and IMEI data, a process that reportedly involved scrutinising close to a hundred mobile numbers before the trail led to Bareilly. Technical surveillance and coordinated raids culminated in the arrest of Sachin and his associate, Rakesh, on July 31.
During questioning, police found that one of the two accused had allegedly assembled the entire documentary illusion, forged NGO receipts, fake ultrasound reports and fabricated medical paperwork designed to withstand a prospective parent’s scrutiny. The scale of that forgery operation became clearer with the recovery of mobile phones, SIM cards, bank documents, debit and PAN cards, and fourteen rubber stamps purportedly belonging to hospitals and doctors. Investigators are now examining the seized devices to determine how many other victims may have been targeted through the same setup.
Why Adoption Fraud Exploits a Gap Most Victims Don’t See
Adoption in India is governed exclusively through the Central Adoption Resource Authority, the statutory body under the Juvenile Justice Act that licenses agencies, verifies documentation and oversees every step of a legal placement. Any arrangement conducted outside that framework, however convincing the paperwork appears, has no legal standing and offers victims no institutional recourse once money changes hands.
That structural gap is precisely what fraudsters in this case appear to have exploited, presenting themselves as a shortcut through a process that hopeful parents already know to be long, uncertain and emotionally exhausting. The willingness to bypass procedural delay, combined with the vulnerability that comes with wanting a child badly enough, created exactly the conditions scammers needed to sustain the fraud across multiple payments before suspicion set in.
Cybercrime expert and former IPS officer Prof. Triveni Singh said social engineering-based frauds frequently exploit emotionally sensitive situations to manipulate victims into lowering their guard. He advised that adoption should be pursued only through authorised government agencies and legally recognised institutions, and urged people to verify an organisation’s credentials thoroughly before making any payment or sharing personal documents online.
Police have appealed to the public to report any suspicious demand for advance payments or unfamiliar documentation related to adoption through the National Cyber Crime Helpline at 1930 or the National Cyber Crime Reporting Portal, as the investigation continues to identify other members of the network and additional victims.
