Four dupe several aspirants with promise of railway jobs

Four persons, including three from the same family, have been booked for duping job aspirants by promising them positions in Indian Railways. The accused provided fake appointment letters and conducted medical check-ups to gain the victims' trust. They have been charged with various offenses including forgery and cheating.

Mumbai: Four persons, including three of a family, were booked for allegedly duping several aspirants by promising them jobs in Indian Railways. The accused not only provided the candidates with fake appointment/joining letters but also got their medical check-ups done at Byculla Railway Hospital and also sent some of them to Farrukhabad in Uttar Pradesh for training, police officials said on Friday.

HT Image

The accused have been identified as Vikram Bagul, his son Avinash Bagul, Vikram’s brother Amar Bagul and Hartali Rohidas.

The complainant – Vinod Rathod, 27, a resident of Government Colony in Churchgate – completed Bachelor of Arts (BA) and was searching for a job, an officer from Marine Drive police station said, adding, “He knew Vikram for 20 years as they both stayed in the same colony.”

“I came to know that Vikram’s son Avinash had joined the railways as a ticket collector and was working at Byculla station where I met him. He told me that his uncle Amar, who worked in railways in a senior position, had helped him get the job,” Rathod said in his complaint.

According to the police, Avinash then told Rathod that his uncle helped people get jobs in railways on Group C posts, and he charges ₹15 lakh for the same. “As I have known the family for the last 20 years, I trusted them and started collecting the money and later negotiated the amount to ₹13.5 lakh. On August 15, 2021, I paid ₹5 lakh as advance to start the work,” said the complainant.

Later, the accused gave him the “appointment letter” and called him to the DRM office in Mumbai Central with all the documents for verification, the officer said, adding that they, however, took all the papers from him outside the office itself.

“In October 2021, the accused even took the complainant for training to Farrukhabad in Uttar Pradesh and told him that the training will be held at Kannauj. They waited for 15 days in Farrukhabad with other aspiring candidates but when they never got any phone call from railways for training, they started suspecting the accused and started demanding the money back,” the police officer said, adding that Rohidas was accompanying the accused throughout the incident.

“After several phone calls, Amar returned me ₹2.5 lakh in cash and later, in January 2023, gave me two cheques for the remaining amount. The cheques, however, bounced and thereafter, he kept on avoiding my calls,” said Rathod. He then approached the police.

The accused were booked for personating public servants, common intention, cheating by personation, forgery, forgery for the purpose of cheating and using as genuine a forged document.

“It has come to our notice that the accused have duped several other job aspirants with a similar modus operandi. We will do a detailed investigation in the matter,” said DCP Zone 1, Dr Pravin Mundhe.