Hackers dupe Dr Reddy's Laboratories of ₹2.16 crore—here's how the cyber fraud unfolded

Dr Reddy’s Laboratories Ltd has reportedly lost ₹2.16 crore in a cyber fraud, where hackers diverted funds by impersonating a Group Pharmaceuticals executive, according to a report by Moneycontrol citing an FIR filed with the Bengaluru City Cyber Crime Police on November 5.

The complaint was filed by Mahesh Babu K from Group Pharmaceuticals Ltd., who said the company was supposed to receive a payment of ₹2.16 crore from Dr. Reddy’s for goods supplied. The scammers allegedly hacked email exchange between the two companies and sent a fake message to Dr. Reddy’s finance team last week.

The case of email spoof

The email was sent from an address similar to the official one, which is ‘KKeshav@Grouppharma.in’ instead of ‘kkeshav@grouppharma.in’ and asked the team to send the amount to another Bank of Baroda account. The officials believed that the email was genuine and made the payment to the fraudulent account.

After discovering the fraud, Group Pharmaceuticals reached out the police to freeze the funds sent to the fake account and recover the amount. As per the FIR, the accused is based in Vadodara, Gujarat, the report said.

The case has been registered under Sections 66(C) and 66(D) of the Information Technology Act over accusations of identity theft and cheating by impersonation, along with relevant provisions of the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita. The cyber fraud probe is currently underway.

Information Technology Act, 2000 addresses offences such as identity theft, impersonation, cheating by personation through computer resources, and dissemination of obscene or harmful material.

Rise of cyber frauds in India

Cyber frauds have become very common in the recent times with both companies and individuals losing significant amount of funds. Indians lost more than Rs, 22,000 crore to online scams last year, the Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA) informed the parliament in July. Meanwhile, cyber frauds worth ₹36.45 lakh reported on the National Cyber Crime Reporting Portal (NCRP) as of 28 February 2025.

According to the government, techniques such as spoofing, where criminals act like trusted sources, are showing up in multiple fraud reports. Similarly, cases of deepfakes leveraging AI and phishing, where individuals are lured into revealing sensitive information through deceptive emails or messages, are also on the rise.