Four officials of DJN Group of Companies were arrested by Ranchi Police on charges of duping crores of rupees in the name of investments in commodity trade. In the course of investigation, the arrested frauds have confessed to extracting Rs100 crores from their investors.
Chief Managing Director of the firm Jitendra Mohan Sinha, proprietor Vishal Kumar Sinha, Director Prashant Kumar Sinha and Manager Santosh Kumar were in the process of moving their assets from Jharkhand and disappearing with the money of their investors, when the police caught them.
Receiving a tip-off about their intended getaway, police forces had been searching for the four criminals. Meanwhile, around 100 plaintiffs lodged written complaint against them with lalpur Police Station, accusing them of forging valuable documents, using them as genuine paperwork, criminal breach of trust and cheating and dishonestly inducing delivery of property.
After the arrest police recovered five counterfeit PAN cards, ATM cards of 30 banks, passbooks of 35 banks, four luxury cars, a motorcycle, important documents and Rs40,000 cash from the possession of the accused.
The accused have disclosed the total valuation of their assets to the tune of Rs100 crores, which is subject to verification, stated Senior Superintendent of Police Kuldeep Dwivedi during a press conference on Saturday.
“Apart from Jharkhand, they were operating in Bihar, Odisha, Chhattisgarh and Gujarat. Companies’ two bank accounts in Ranchi alone show transactions up to Rs22 crore. Process to freeze six bank accounts in Ranchi and Arrah has been initiated,” stated City DSP Shambhu Kumar Singh.
A key instrument in their fraudulent activities was their Multi Commodity Exchange (MCX) registration number which they used to gain the investors’ confidence.
“Approaching an investor, they furnished a booklet of DJN Commodities and Equities which contained list of its officials, an investor registration form and their MCX registration number 46575, which is issued by SEBI and is quite difficult to acquire. The booklet even cautioned the investors to associate only with companies registered with MCX. This convinced us to trust them with our money,” said Harishchandra Barnwal, a retired BSl employee from Bokaro who invested his provident fund in DJN Commodities.
“We were promised monthly returns of three per cent which were irregular at best. Shortage of funds was quoted as the reason behind delays in giving us our returns,” said DP Barnwal, another investor from Bokaro. 4 online trading frauds in net for swindling Rs100 cr\Vishal had also procured franchise of Unicorn, an established online trading firm, Singh said. This was a way for investing the money they had appropriated from investors in the name of DJN Companies, he added.
Other auxiliary firms of DJN Group of Companies were also opened and were used for channelling the money gathered through DJN Commodities. Several acres of land was purchased by the four accused under the name of DJN Construction in Delhi, Ranchi, Palamu, Garhwa and latehar, Singh said.
“The arrested criminals are being interrogated for more information in this case, with help from Income Tax Department. We request the public to come forward with any information they have about this firm,” said the SSP.
There are around 700 to 800 from Bokaro alone, stated Santosh Kumar, a retired BSl official and investor in DJN Companies. We will soon submit a complete list of victims from Bokaro to lalpur police station, he added.