With the arrest of three persons on Thursday eevening, the Special Task Force (STF) claimed to have busted a gang involved in duping businessmen and realtors by calling them after posing as Officer on Special Duty (OSD) to Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath.
IG STF, Amitabh Yash said that they were informed that a gang was active whose members used to pose as OSD to CM and were extorting money or duping traders and government officials. The IG said that in one such case registered in Aliganj police station, a call was made from the CM OSD’s mobile number to Deputy labour Commissioner RK Mishra in Kanpur. He was asked that as per CM’s directives, raids should be conducted on RCPl Group in Kanpur. However, Mishra became suspicious and informed District Magistrate of Kanpur after which a case was registered. Similar calls were also made to other officials or business houses either to extort money or to get some work done.
The top cop said that they developed the input and on Thursday evening, a ST team dropped the net on three gang members at Kapoorthala locality of Aliganj. They were identified as Atish Kumar Mishra of Haridwar, Hanuman Shukla of Waltarganj (Basti) and Rahul Upadhyay of Tarabganj (Gonda).
During quizzing, the trio told investigators that they procured a SIM card by submitting fake identity proof and registered it in a caller identification app as ‘Chief Minister, UP’. They used it with impunity to call builders and others and duped them of their money.
Amitabh Yash said that Hanuman Shukla was a former aide of listed criminal-turned-politician Amarmani Tripathi and was arrested alongwith the former minister by Basti Police in Rahul Madhesia kidnapping case in 2001. He was also the main accused in the killing of Hunior Engineer Ravi Pratap of Irrigation department in 2006. All three accused were sent to jail on Friday.