A Delhi court, while dismissing the bail application of accused Deepak Vats, who was arrested by the Delhi Police Special Cell in February this year in an alleged cyber fraud case involving more than Rs 52.81 lakh, observed that the complainant named in the FIR, domestic worker Diksha Devi, “did not initiate or make a single digital payment throughout the entire period” and that “the overwhelming majority of the transactions, all except the final cash deposit of Rs 5 lakh, were made not from the accounts of the complainant Diksha Devi, but directly from the accounts of a Haryana Judicial Officer, who is the actual and real victim in the present matter”.

In an order dated June 9, Additional Sessions Judge (New Delhi District) Saurabh Partap Singh Laler noted that the FIR was registered on the complaint of Diksha Devi, “a domestic worker”, who alleged she was cheated through an online dating application in a fraud amounting to Rs 52,81,999.

However, the court recorded that “a closer examination of the facts and documents placed on record reveals that the complainant Diksha Devi is, in fact, the maid employed by a Judicial Officer serving in Haryana”.

“A matter that ought to be relatively straightforward, a cyber fraud case with a clear digital money trail, has been complicated, obfuscated and rendered murky by the conduct of all three protagonists: the accused, the victim and the investigating officer,” the court noted.

Expressing its anguish, the court added: “A judicial officer, a person who is herself entrusted with the solemn duty of dispensing justice, of upholding truth before the law, and of expecting others who appear before her to present the complete facts, has chosen to approach this Court obliquely, through her maid’s name, rather than coming forward herself.”

The court also acknowledged the “profound personal embarrassment and professional sensitivity that a judicial officer must feel upon discovering that she has been ensnared in a honey trap”. However, it added that “the officer’s personal discomfort cannot be permitted to compromise the integrity of a criminal investigation”. It further observed that the judicial officer “should, at the earliest opportunity, come before the IO or, if she so chooses, before the Ld Magistrate, and place on record the complete and unvarnished truth”.

The order records the accused’s claim that he and the Haryana judicial officer became acquainted through Tinder. According to the accused, the judicial officer initiated contact through a pseudonymous profile titled “Altruistic Joy” and “the parties thereafter developed a consensual romantic relationship from 23.11.2025 onwards”. He also claimed that “all financial transfers were made voluntarily” by the judicial officer and that she “proposed depositing funds into an online gaming/betting account maintained in his name for entertainment purposes”.

In its 24-page order, the court stated: “The singular and most striking aspect of this case… is that while the complaint has been filed in the name of the domestic help Diksha Devi, every material transaction that forms the substratum of the alleged fraud was made not from Diksha Devi’s account, but from the accounts of her employer, a serving judicial officer.”

The court added: “Diksha Devi, the complainant, did not initiate or make a single digital payment throughout the entire period. This Court is constrained to record that the complaint as filed does not seem to reflect the true complainant.”

The court noted that the WhatsApp chats produced by the accused were “entirely one-sided”. According to the order, “They show only what was written by the victim and received by the accused, and contain absolutely nothing of what was sent by the accused to the victim.”

The court further observed that the chats and bank records reflected a sequence in which requests and confirmations of transfers were followed by corresponding deposits into the accused’s account. It noted that the communications were “of a deeply personal and intimate nature between two adults” and that “the nature and tenor of those communications leave this Court in no doubt that the chats are those of two persons who were in a relationship of deep emotional and physical intimacy”.

After discussing the chats, financial transfers and alleged meetings, the court observed: “In the considered view of this Court, the pattern of financial transactions correlating so precisely and immediately with the WhatsApp communications is consistent with the hypothesis of a honey trap.”

It further stated: “The modus operandi is distressingly familiar: initial contact through a dating application, rapid and intensive emotional escalation, the development of deep personal intimacy, and then the progressive extraction of money, often presented as investments, gifts or shared ventures. The present matter bears all the hallmarks of this pattern.”

The order also referred to “the booking at Drishtti Dreamscapes, Saket, New Delhi, confirmed in the WhatsApp message of 08.12.2025 (Annexure-B), and the two physical meetings claimed by the accused himself”.

The court expressed doubts over the explanation for a Rs 5 lakh cash deposit, recording: “This Court does not accept this explanation at face value.”

Describing as “inherently implausible” the claim that Diksha Devi had accumulated Rs 5 lakh in cash, the court noted that the deposit was made by the court peon of the judicial officer. It observed: “The most obvious inference is that this cash, deposited from Haryana by the court peon of a Haryana judicial officer, was sourced from the judicial officer and not from her domestic help.”

The court also found a “fundamental and glaring lacuna in the investigation” and noted that “not a single piece of electronic evidence has been furnished, collected, or placed on record by or from either the complainant Diksha Devi or the victim”. The court criticised the Investigating Officer for not obtaining Tinder data, WhatsApp data from the victim’s device, call records and information relating to entities through which money was allegedly routed, observing: “The IO appears to have proceeded on the assumption that the complainant’s account is accurate, without subjecting it to independent verification through the available electronic evidence.”

Rejecting the bail plea, the court held that the accused had received more than Rs 52 lakh, had “actively withheld material evidence” and had “refused to provide the mobile phone password, impeding forensic investigation”.

The court concluded: “Having considered the entire material on record, the arguments advanced by Ld Counsel on both sides, the nature and gravity of the alleged offences, the stage of investigation, the conduct of the accused in actively withholding material evidence, the status of the victim, and all the foregoing considerations, this Court is of the firm view that the present is not a fit case for the grant of bail at this stage.”

The bail application was accordingly dismissed.