Seven including a woman arrested by Halasurgate police for duping BWSSB contractor of Rs.2 crore with promise of doubling investment in 24 hours

Pramesh S Jain 

The Halasurgate Police busted a racket and arrested a gang of seven including a woman who duped a city based businessman luring him to invest Rs.2 crore with a promise to double the amount within a day .

The accused set up a office at Cubbonpet claimed to be the representative of “Malaysia based “OIA: Achithi Inchit Cedi Hchiz” to lure the investors .

The victims resident of Sunkadakatte convinced to invest Rs.2 crores, with a promise that the company would return Rs.3.5 crore via RTGS/NEFT within a single day.

The victims then visited a company office at Patel Enterprises in Cubbonpet,11th Cross, and handed over Rs.2 crore in cash as investment.

The accused took the cash and escaped on the pretext of depositing the hard cash in a different branch chest, After waiting for hours when the accused did not return , the victim realized that he had been cheated and filed a complaint with the police on December 11 .

Initially the accused assured the victims that the money would be counted using a currency counting machine and then transferred Rs.9,780 to their bank account. They were also assured that the remaining amount would be credited shortly.

The accused further convinced the victims to hand over the money for “safety,” claiming that the cash would be stored in a locker at another office.

However, the victims never received any profit or their original investment back,and the accused escaped .

Based on the complaint,the Halasurgate Police registered a cheating and and nabbed three of the accused within few hours near Majestic Bus Stand, along with three mobile phones while they were about to flee the city.

Upon interrogation,the three suspects confessed to their involvement in the fraud and revealed that seven more individuals were part of the scam.

The accused have been identified as Shan Thomas,59,a BE graduate from Kottayam in Kerala and working in a medical shop and his accomplice Jose Kuruvilla,62,BA graduate and real estate broker from Trissur and Jean Kamal,45,BE graduate Jaraganahalli in JP Nagar and working as medical store as sales man.

Based on their information,the Halasurgate police recovered five mobile phones, one currency counting machine,and Rs.44.02 lakh from them.

The police produced the accused before the court and taken them into custody to ascertain the details of the other accused who were on the run with the share of the money.

The police subsequently arrested Vijay Vaman Chempulkar,45, BE from Mumbai,and contractor by profession,Urvashi Goswamy,34,BE from Hennur and a civil contractor by profession,Jaffer Sadiq,38,from Koramangala and Amish Mahesh Gidwani,40,from Vidyaranyapura .

The other accused in the case including Kalyan Murugan from new Delhi,Vicky Ahuja from Delhi,Alpesh Patel from Gujrat,Panju Jabalpur from Madhya Pradesh,Chandresh Patel from Gujarat were on the run,efforts are on to track them down, the officer, said .

The police are now further investigating whether the accused have cheated others using similar modus operandi he added.