Five held for duping 6 persons of over ₹15 crore in Delhi

Police received several complaints that they duped people of ₹14 crore on the pretext of providing work orders for the transportation of Covid-19 vaccines

The Economic Offences Wing (EOW) unit of Delhi Police recently arrested five persons from Tripura and Delhi for allegedly duping at least six persons to the tune of ₹15 crore, on the pretext of providing them with work orders from the Central government for the transportation of Covid-19 vaccines to different states.

The complainants mentioned the same modus operandi and levelled allegations that they were made to sit inside the conference room of Nirman Bhavan in order to make them believe that there was a genuine work order for the transportation of Covid-19 vaccines (Representational image/Reuters Archive)

Special commissioner of police (EOW) Ravindra Singh Yadav identified the arrested persons as Hermenn Sabherwal (43) of Noida, Govind Tulsyan (52) of Adarsh Nagar, Delhi, Diprana Tiwari (32) of Wazirabad, Trilok Singh (53) of Minto Road and Mrityunjoy Roy (44) of RK Puram. “While Sabherwal was arrested from a hotel in Agartala (Tripura) on August 30, the others were arrested in September from their respective places of residence,” he said.

He added that the men forged documents from the ministry of health and family welfare at Nirman Bhawan, where Roy was the reception officer and Singh and Tiwari were members of the multi-tasking staff (MTS). “We received several complaints that they duped people of ₹14 crore on the pretext of providing work orders for the transportation of Covid-19 vaccines. In all complaints, the complainants mentioned the same modus operandi and levelled allegations that they were made to sit inside the conference room of Nirman Bhavan in order to make them believe that there was a genuine work order for the transportation of Covid-19 vaccines,” he said.

Yadav also said that during investigation, they found that in May 2021, the arrested men met with the complainants and offered to procure the work order for them. “To gain the trust of the complainants, the men arranged the meetings inside the premises of Nirman Bhavan , impersonating officers there. They also obtained signatures of the complainants on forged work orders and, in lieu of those forged papers, they cheated the complainants of over ₹15 crore. We scrutinised and analysed the bank accounts and other details of the arrested men, and found that there were huge cash deposits in their bank accounts,” he said.

The special CP also said that Sabherwal has an MBA degree and was running a HR company, which ran into losses. “Tulsyan, a Class 3 dropout, runs a factory of manufacturing stabilisers. Roy was on deputation with the ministry of home affairs and was a reception officer at Nirman Bhavan. The role of other suspects is under investigation and they’ll also be arrested soon,” he added.