Delhi Police has arrested a former bank employee on the charges of duping people. The accused had lost a sizeable amount in betting and was under pressure to repay his debts.
The accused, Tanuj Bhatia (31), lost about Rs 15-20 lakh in cricket betting and started duping people to repay his debts, said a police officer. Bhatia had fraudulently obtained credit card details of the people and allegedly duped them.
The con job came to light when Deepti Nirwal, a resident of Greater Kailash-1, lodged a police complaint alleging that she was duped of Rs 97,000 by the accused.
She had applied for a credit card to a bank, where Bhatia was working as an executive. After a few days, he informed Nirwal that she had to pay Rs 25,000 towards the outstanding dues of her previous credit card, the police said. On March 8, the complainant received her new credit card from Bhatia's bank. She was informed by the accused that it would be activated only after she received a password, which she had to share with him.
Accordingly, she shared the password with the accused and soon after, an amount of Rs 51,000 was transferred from her credit card account to a Paytm account, the police added.
When inquired about the transaction, the accused told her that the money was sent to her previous bank.
On March 11, two sums of Rs 21,000 and Rs 25,000 were transferred from her account to two Paytm accounts respectively.
However, when she checked with her previous bank, she was told her credit card dues were yet to be cleared.
When Nirwal went to Bhatia's bank, she learnt that he had left the job and was incommunicado. Subsequently, she approached police and a case was lodged.
Police sent an e-mail to Paytm asking for the details of the accounts to which the money from the complainant's account was sent. They also obtained the bank account statements of the accused.
Subsequently, it came to light that Bhatia had sold off his Paschim Vihar house to pay off his debts. His mobile phone was put on surveillance and he was arrested on July 1 from North-West Delhi's Keshavpuram, said Deputy Commissioner of Police (south-east) Romil Baaniya. Bhatia told police that he had been working in the banking sector for 10 years.
He had borrowed money from private financiers at a high rate of interest to recover the money he had lost in betting, police said.
"We are going through his bank statements and Paytm transactions to ascertain how many people he had duped and the money he had earned this way," said Baaniya.