Hyderabad: A 43-year-old private employee from Alwal lost over 70 lakh to cyber fraudsters in a fake online stock trading scam. According to police officials, the victim was lured through WhatsApp by individuals claiming to represent Zerodha, a legitimate trading platform.The fraudsters, identifying themselves as Hanan Delvi and Ishita Paul, convinced the victim to install what they claimed was a ‘Zerodha’ trading app through a web link. Between April 30 and May 26, the victim transferred 72.55 lakh to various bank accounts provided by the fraudsters.To gain his trust, the fraudsters initially returned 1.73 lakh as ‘profits’ on May 14. When he later requested to withdraw 15 lakh, they claimed his account accumulated profits of 2.19 crore and demanded 43.93 lakh as a ‘tax payment’ for the release of funds.Alarmed by the demand for a huge tax, the victim visited the legitimate Zerodha office in Begumpet and realised that both the app and his trading account were fake. He immediately reported the incident to cyber crime authorities through the 1930 helpline and lodged a complaint with Cyberabad cyber crime sleuths.Based on his complaint, a case was registered at Cyberabad Cyber Crime PS under sections 318(4) (cheating and dishonestly inducing delivery of property), 319(2) (cheating by personation), 336(3) (forgery for purpose of cheating), 338 (forgery of valuable security, will, etc.), 340(2) (using as genuine a forged document or electronic record), r/w 3(5) (common intention) of the BNS, and section 66-D of the IT Act on Friday.