BENGALURU: A 45-year-old man recently became a victim to cybercrime while trying to purchase a tractor under the Pradhan Mantri Kisan Tractor Yojana, losing Rs 60,000.
According to the police complaint filed by Prajwal (name changed), a resident of Vijayanagar, the incident occurred between 10am and 10.30am on April 28.

Prajwal, a software engineer at a private firm, wanted to buy a tractor for agricultural purposes in his native place. He had heard about the PM scheme and the Andhra Pradesh govt giving tractors to farmers with a subsidy.
So, he decided to search the internet and found a list of links mentioning details of Pradhan Mantri Kisan Tractor Yojana. He clicked on one of them, ‘tractoryojana.in/user/raf_fee_ pay.php’.
Prajwal told TOI, “I thought I clicked on an official website. Despite being a techie, I didn’t realise it was fake as there were no http at the beginning of the link.”
The web portal contained information about the scheme and the subsidy. He was asked to fill in the details, and during further steps, asked to make payments for registration fee, security deposit, state tax, and others.
A QR code for UPI was mentioned on the website. Prajwal kept making one payment after another, totalling Rs 59,950.
“My wife warned me not to proceed as it appeared fishy… But there was a mention that the subsidy was available only for a limited period,” Prajwal added.