Bhopal police arrest three from Noida for duping 10,000 people on pretext of ‘loans’

The cyber cell of Bhopal police has arrested three people from Noida on Friday for allegedly duping more than 10,000 people on the pretext of providing personal

The cyber cell of Bhopal police has arrested three people from Noida on Friday for allegedly duping more than 10,000 people on the pretext of providing personal loans at lower interest rates. The suspects were running at least 12 fake websites in the name of finance companies and two call centres, said the police.

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The suspects were identified as David Kumar Jatav, 21, from Ghaziabad, Neha Bhatt, 23, and Manisha Bhatt, 27, from Uttarakhand. Neha and Manisha are sisters.

Another suspect, Kamal Kashyap, is on the run and the police are trying to arrest him. They were arrested under sections 419 (punishment for cheating by personation), 420 (cheating), 467 (forgery), 468 (forgery for purpose of cheating), 471 (fraudulently use genuine documents) and 120 b (criminal conspiracy) of the Indian Penal Code. “The police have recovered six laptops, 25 mobile phones, 21 pen drives, eight activated SIM cards and 19 debit cards from the two call centres in Noida,” said Sandesh Jain, additional superintendent of police, cyber cell, Bhopal police.

Bhopal’s additional director general (ADG) of police, Upendra Jain, said, “A resident of Bhopal Padmesh Singh had lodged a complaint in January this year saying he had spotted a lucrative offer of personal loan, which was being provided at an 8% interest on a website of a finance company. He applied for a loan and also submitted the processing fees of ₹40,000 as demanded by the company, but after waiting for a month, he came to know that the company was fake .”

Bhopal Police’s cyber cell investigated the matter and found that a Noida based call centre was duping people in the name of providing loans.

“A team of Bhopal police raided a call centre in Noida and found that David, who is a website designer, had developed a website of a fake finance company in 2018 and started offering loans on it at an 8-9% annual interest rate. David, Neha and Manisha also started two call centres in Noida and appointed 50 women at the salary of Rs 10,000 to Rs 12,000 per month.

People were required to submit their basic details on the website. Later, someone from the call centre called up the prospective customer and asked him/her to deposit processing fees which ranged fro Rs 10,000 to Rs 40,000,” said Jain.

“After duping around 1,200 people, they shut down the website and opened a new one by changing the name of the company and numbers of the call centres,” said the ADG.

In his confession, David said he wanted to save money for marrying Neha. “One of his friends Kamal Kashyap gave the idea of running a website in the name of fake companies to dupe people. Kashyap is absconding. Police are trying to nab him,” said police.