A 29-year-old man, who used to pose as a senior bureaucrat, has been arrested by the Delhi Police for allegedly cheating several persons on the pretext of procuring licenses for petrol pumps, gas agencies and house allotments under House and Urban Development Corporation (HUDCO).
The accused has been identified as Sampath Kumar Surappagari, a resident of Medchal district, Hyderabad in Telangana. Police said that the accused in 2013 came to Delhi for preparation of civil services examination but he could not succeed in this exam and started publishing one daily newspaper from Delhi’s Karol Bagh.
According to Dr G Ram Gopal Naik, the Deputy Commissioner of Police (DCP), Crime Branch, in May 2017, one person Malipaddy Sandeep,a resident of Hyderabad was approached by K. Ramaswamy, who stated him that his nephew Sampath Kumar is a senior bureaucrat and posted at New Delhi and he can get procure approved licenses for Bharat Petroleum and Bharat Gas.
“K. Ramaswamy induced Malipaddy Sandeep to pay an amount of Rs 1.8 crore for both the licenses and agreed that Sampath would get 2 licenses of petrol pumps and gas agency by the end of August 2017,” said the DCP.
“Thereafter, both Sampath and K Ramaswamy kept speaking to the complainant till October 2018. Sampath gave Sandeep several forged letters to induce him. From November 2018, both the persons stopped calling Sandeep and even stopped picking up his calls following which complaint got suspicious. Sampath gave the victim bank cheques which bounced. Samptah even threatened to kill Sandeep following he registered a complaint with police,” said the DCP.
“The accused was recently arrested in three criminal cases in Hyderabad and got bail. But, he did not join investigation in the present case. Thus, a Non Bailable Warrant was obtained against him. On July 2, acting on specific inputs the accused was nabbed from a Hotel in Delhi’s Mahipalpur area,” said the DCP.
“During interrogation, the accused revealed that in order to earn lavish life he used to introduce himself as a senior bureaucrat, and later, he prepared fake IDs of government departments and used it to influence the innocent persons and started cheating people with huge amounts,” said the DCP adding that efforts are being made to apprehend the other accused persons involved in this cheating racket.