Taking their recklessness to blood-chilling heights, a group of fraudsters have used Navratna Public Sector Units (PSUs) like ONGC, GAIl and BHEl to spread out net to entrap job-seeking educated youths from across the country and subsequently dupe them of lakhs, dangling fat-salaried jobs in them. They made Palm City, Dehradun and Haridwar as the bases from where they duped people in 2012.
Things came to the fore after State Task Force (STF) Uttarakhand arrested two persons for their alleged involvement in it. It is learnt that the accused had developed fake websites of the Navratna companies and using them, they had advertised recruitments in various forms of media.
One of the accused is 26- year-old Sayed Asif alias Ashu alias Aman Mishra alias Anurag Sharma alias Raj Saini, native of Shiv Vihar, Karawal Nagar, Delhi who is currently living in Sector 12, Noida, Gautam Buddha Nagar, Uttar Pradesh. And the other is 29- year-old Manoj Kumar Verma, native of Chhaprauli, Baghpat (Uttar Pradesh). They were arrested from Bypass Haridwar Road. The accused had been operating the racket from Noida, Uttar Pradesh, said STF SSP Dr Sadanand Date while interacting with media persons on Friday.
He said things started rolling after a Dehradun-based ONGC officer had registered a complaint and a case under sections 420 of IPC and 66/66d of IT Act in the Cantt Police Station was subsequently lodged.
SSP Date said that he had formed several teams to crack the case. The teams comprise sub-inspectors RB Chamola and NK Bhatt, head constable Ganga Prasad Joshi, constables Rakchandra, lokendra, Mohan Aswal, Kailash Nyal, Anant Yadav, Kadar Khan and Sandesh Yadav. The teams had faced difficulties initially because of the false documents the accused had used to commit the fraud.
The accused had been arrested after the teams, tasked to crack the case, had put several suspects under scanner, he said, adding that the rest of the gang would be arrested soon.
He said that the police had recovered fake ID cards, Aadhar cards, voter identity cards, PAN cards and some other documents from the possession of the accused. Thirteen mobile phones and 11 false SIM cards had also been recovered from them, he said.
One of the accused had made fake identity card of one of the leading English newspapers. Besides, he had also acquired a fake identity card to pose as a private personal secretary of a former Union minister, Date said.
The accused were tech-savvy and the websites of the high profile PSUs developed by them was such that one could hardly suspect that they were indulging in fraud. They used to call the youths over mobile numbers the SIMs of which had been acquired fraudulently, the police officer informed. They used to give the youths joining letters after putting them on the fake websites to keep things above suspicion.
The laptops and storage device seized by the cops would be sent to Forensic Science laboratory, Dehradun. Police teams also recovered false appointment letters given in the name of BHEl and rubber stamps of GAIl, ONGC and BHEl from the possession of the accused.
When being grilled, they are said to have confessed their crime and said they had also duped a number of farmers regarding loans and the like through Kisan Call Centre they had set up in 2012. Enthused by the success, they had broadened their net to enmesh the educated unemployed with the lure of well-paid jobs in the giant PSUs.
Investigation revealed that the accused had sought help for making web-designing from Star Web Maker Service Private limited, Sector-2, Noida. False rubber stumps were made in Noida. One Mohit from Mangalore, Haridwar was given the task of making false bank accounts. He is absconding now.