Nagpur: The local police today arrested two persons from Ballarshah in neighbouring Chandrapur district for allegedly duping several aspirants by charging ‘registration fees’ under the pretext of offering them government jobs, police said.
According to police, the arrested duo were operating a fake call centre and issuing advertisements for jobs in newspapers to lure the gullible aspirants.
They even promised jobs under the ‘Pradhan Mantri Kaushal Vikas Yojana’ in Maharashtra as well as other states, a senior officer said.
“Acting on a complaint, the police raided the office cum call centre of Pravinkumar Balmikiprasad (42) and Arun Trivedi (32) in Ballarshah and arrested them. A total of eleven persons, including nine girls, were found working there,” Nagpur DCP (Economic Wing) Shweta Khedkar told a press conference.
While Balmikiprasad is a resident of Alinagar in Bihar’s Nalanda, Trivedi hails from Uttar Pradesh.
Police seized three desktop computers, one laptop, a colour printer, 15 mobile phone handsets, fake government documents and cash worth Rs 1,06,800 from the call centre.
Explaining the modus operandi of the duo, the officer said they used to publish advertisements in newspapers claiming vacancies for the posts of supervisors and data entry operators under various government schemes.
“They would also publish contact numbers and E-mail IDs to receive applications. Once the application is received, the women tele-callers in the office would contact the aspirant and ask him/her to send documents online. They would ask each candidate to deposit Rs 4,500 in the bank account provided by them,” Khedkar said.
As per the preliminary investigation, a total of 2,408 such calls were made through the call centre, which had been in operation since the last one year, to residents of various cities in Maharashtra, besides to residents of Goa, Ahmedabad and Meerut, she said.
Police suspect that around 300 youths were duped by the duo.
Balmikiprasad and Trivedi were booked under section 468 (forgery for purpose of cheating), 471 (using as genuine a forged document) and 420 (cheating and dishonestly inducing delivery of property) of the IPC, the DCP said.
—PTI