PRAYAGRAJ, Nov. 21 -- With the wedding season in full swing, cybercriminals have devised a new way to target unsuspecting residents of the city. Fraudsters are circulating WhatsApp wedding invitation files ending with the ".apk" extension to hack mobile phones and siphon money from bank accounts. Two residents have already fallen victim to the scam, losing a total of Rs.76,000. Cyber crime police have urged the public not to download any suspicious ".apk" files, officials said. Sunil Yadav, a hotelier from Rajapur, reported that on November 10 he received a wedding invitation on WhatsApp from an unknown number. Assuming it was from someone he knew, he downloaded the file. Soon after, his phone froze. Within a couple of hours, he received a message alerting him that Rs.42,000 had been withdrawn from his bank account. Only then did he realise he had been duped through a malicious ".apk" file disguised as a wedding card. In another incident, Ravi Keserwani of Tagore Town said he received a similar WhatsApp "wedding card" on the evening of November 15. After downloading the file, he noticed it contained the name of a stranger. The next morning, he received a notification that Rs.34,347 had been deducted from his account. Cyber police have registered FIRs in both cases and have launched investigations, officials confirmed. "Cybercriminals are sending '.apk' files to cheat people. If anyone becomes a victim of cyber fraud, they should file a complaint immediately," said Om Narayan Gautam, in-charge of the cyber police station, Prayagraj. Just last month, several people in the city were targeted through fake traffic challan files shared in the same ".apk" format. According to the cyber crime police, people should carefully check whether a file ends with ".apk" before downloading anything from an unknown sender. Such files, they warned, can be used to hack phones and steal personal as well as banking information....