Mohali, Oct. 26 -- A special CBI court in Mohali has rejected the regular bail plea of a 26-year-old man accused of helping access a bank account allegedly used to route part of the Rs.2 crore proceeds of a "digital arrest" fraud targeting a retired Punjab State Power Corporation Limited (PSPCL) chief engineer. In its order, special judicial magistrate Karanvir Singh Maju held that the material collected by the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI), including the banking and digital trail and statements of other accused, warranted further scrutiny. The court also noted that the investigation into the role of other accused was underway and that the money was yet to be fully recovered. The accused, Rahul Kumar Patra, from Jamshedpur in Jharkhand, has been described in the order as a student. He denies involvement in the fraud. According to the CBI, the complainant, Sukhmander Singh, who retired as a PSPCL chief engineer on April 30, 2025, began receiving calls on May 9 that year from people posing as government and law-enforcement officials. The callers allegedly told him that a SIM card issued in his name had been used for unlawful activities in Mumbai and falsely linked him to a money-laundering case involving a Rs.538-crore bank-related matter. The fraudsters allegedly threatened him with legal action, kept him under phone and video surveillance and instructed him not to leave home, creating the impression that he was under "digital arrest". Between May 13 and June 11, 2025, the victim transferred Rs.2 crore through 10 RTGS transactions from his State Bank of India (SBI) account to nine bank accounts. He realised he had been cheated on June 12, when the callers asked him to bring his wife into the calls. The Punjab and Haryana high court directed the CBI to take over the investigation on March 17, 2026. The agency registered its case on March 25. Investigators allege that a HDFC Bank account belonging to Saismruti Charitable Trust received Rs.15 lakh of the complainant's money on May 23, 2025. The amount was allegedly transferred onwards the same day. The account was operated by authorised signatories and trustees Bibekananda Dixit and Jayant Kumar Acharya. The CBI alleges that Dixit supplied banking credentials and a SIM card associated with the account to Chandan Kumar Singh, who allegedly passed access to Patra. Investigators also cited mobile-number and handset links, internet-banking access records and contact details found on a phone seized from premises associated with Patra in Kolkata. The devices were sent to the Central Forensic Science Laboratory, with its report awaited, according to the order. Patra's counsel argued that he had no contact with the complainant and claimed his phone's VPN identity may have been misused. The defence also submitted that the search had yielded no incriminating evidence against him. The CBI opposed bail, alleging that his role emerged from the digital and banking trail and statements of other accused, and that he was not cooperating with the investigation. The agency filed a chargesheet against eight accused on August 27, 2026. Rejecting bail, the court observed that the absence of direct contact between Patra and the victim did not, by itself, rule out a possible role in the alleged conspiracy. It clarified that its observations would not affect the merits of the trial....