E-Paper
13 people duped of ₹1.56 crore on promise of govt jobs; four booked
The police have booked a four-member gang for allegedly duping 13 people to the tune of ₹1
The police have booked a four-member gang for allegedly duping 13 people to the tune of ₹1.56 crore after promising them jobs in the Indian railways and post offices. The accused even handed them bogus appointment letters and sent them to Chennai for training. A search is underway for the four.
Interestingly, the entire fraud was played out through an advocate who was the point of contact for the job aspirants as the four preferred to remain anonymous.
“We have not made the mediator as an accused in the FIR as his daughter was also one of the victims. But he has not been given a clean chit either,” a police officer said, adding the possibility of railway officials’ involvement in the racket has also not been ruled out yet.
In 2013, Chunabhatti resident Harishchandra Kadam, 32, lost his father who was employed with Mumbai Port Trust. After he failed to get his father’s job on compassionate grounds, he approached advocate Shivaji Ghanage, a friend of one of his relatives, and paid him ₹2 lakh, Kadam said in his complaint filed at MRA Marg police station in June last year. As Ghanage could not get him a job in the port trust, he returned the money to Kadam, he said.
A few months later, Ghanage told Kadam that he had met some people who could offer him a job in the railways, but he would have to pay for it. “Since I was desperately looking for a government job, I gave ₹28 lakh to Ghanage towards my and my nephew’s jobs. Ghanage said that he had met those people and handed them the money, but we never got the jobs,” Kadam told HT, adding he sold his agricultural land, mortgaged his home, and took a loan to arrange the money.
Apart from Kadam, 12 other job aspirants had given money to Ghanage. They are from Osmanabad, Satara, Latur and other regions of western Maharashtra and are known to each other, police officers said.
The complainant claimed that the accused accepted the money from the mediator, Ghanage, near the exit gate of the General Post Office in Mumbai. Later, the four gave the victims a PDF form to fill out. The job aspirants were then called to Mumbai and sent to a place in Byculla where their medical tests were conducted, a police officer said.
A month later, they received appointment letters and were asked to report at railways’ Bhusawal office. But the railway officials there told the victims that the appointment letters were fake, the officer said.
When the aspirants confronted Ghanage, he informed them a few days later that wrong letters were issued to them. The job aspirants were then asked to undergo a Covid-19 test and given fresh appointment letters with ‘postings’ at Chennai railway station, the police officer said.
At Chennai railway station, the aspirants were asked to scan goods in the name of training for a month, and when they realised that it was part of a fraud, they again questioned Ghanage, the police said. Ghanage pursued the matter with the four who issued fresh appointment letters for jobs in the General Post Office to two aspirants, but these too turned out to be fake.
Finally, Ghanage on June 11, 2021, filed a police complaint against the quartet - Shantaram Sakpal, Happy Singh, Pankaj Kumar and Rahul Yadav.
Meanwhile, the zonal DCP investigated Kadam’s complaint, and on Saturday, directed the MRA Marg police to register an FIR.
So far, 13 people have come forward, claiming that they have been cheated of ₹1.56 crore, the police said.
Kadam said, “I have videorecorded the railway premises where I underwent the ‘training’ and have submitted the video to the police.”
The police have booked the four accused under section 406 (criminal breach of trust), 420 (cheating), 465 (forgery), 467 (forgery of valuable security), 468 (forgery for purpose of cheating), 471 (using as genuine a forged), 120B (criminal conspiracy), and 34 (common intention) of Indian Penal Code.
