In a major breakthrough, East district of the Delhi Police on Wednesday claimed to have busted an inter-State gang of well organised cheats who duped around 700 people to the tunes of Rs2 crore on the pretext of giving them fake insurance policies.
The District Investigation Unit of the East district arrested the accused from various parts of the city after police conducted technical surveillance, social media profiling, call details and also analysed bank accounts after which their locations were ascertained.
According to Omvir Singh, Deputy Commissioner of Police (East), the accused people have been identified as Deepak, Rajesh, Raj Kumar, Anuj Baliyan, Vikas and Neeraj.
“They had set up fake insurance companies in the name of Reliance Capital, Manipuram Finance and Aditya Birla finance. Furthermore, 12 mobile phones, two laptops and three ATM cards of Punjab National Bank and SBI have been recovered from the accused,” said officials.
Police said the case came to light when the complainant, Shushma, reported to police that she was duped by the gang.
She had found an advertisement in a local newspaper by ‘Reliance Capital’. The advertisement had promised a loan against her education certificates. She approached the company, for a loan for Rs4 lakh, and she paid Rs5,400 as insurance fee and transferred the money to an account provided by them.
She later got a call from HDFC bank and an official asked her an additional Rs17,500 to get her application approved by the RBI. She then grew suspicious, when they demanded Rs22,500 for the approval of loan after which the complaint was registered, said police on Wednesday.
“During the sustained interrogation of the accused revealed that they knew each other for the past two years. They had set up the fake loan company and also used the newspaper as a medium to target the victims. They had promised the victim’s a loan against their educational certificates and used the Reliance name to avoid suspicion,” said police.
Further investigation is under way to nab the remaining accused. Police said they are also verifying if any more victims were duped in a similar manner.