Overseas job racket mastermind, aide arrested in West Bengal

The crime branch on Wednesday arrested two people, including the mastermind of an overseas job racket busted in the city last month, in West Bengal on Wednesday and recovered 482 genuine passports of people from different states in India

The crime branch on Wednesday arrested two people, including the mastermind of an overseas job racket busted in the city last month, in West Bengal on Wednesday and recovered 482 genuine passports of people from different states in India. The total arrests have reached seven.

Overseas job racket mastermind, aide arrested in West Bengal

The duo, identified as Patit Paban Puleen Haldar, 36, and Mohammad Ilyas Abdul Sattar Shaikh Mansuri, 49, are residents of West Bengal.

Deputy commissioner of police Raj Tilak Roushan from crime branch said investigation revealed that Mansuri was the brain behind the fraud, and he had rented a room in Mumbra where the passports were kept.

However, the accused had withdrawn the ₹77 lakh deposited in 26 bank accounts by the people they had cheated, police inspector Ghanshyam Nair from unit 5 of crime branch said.

Roushan said the accused conned job aspirants by promising them placements in countries, including Azerbaijan, Oman, Dubai, Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Russia, allegedly took their passports, and then provided them with bogus visas after taking ₹50,000 to ₹1 lakh each.

Explaining the modus operandi, he said, the gang first opened an office in New Delhi in May, but a police raid forced them to shift their base to Mumbai. In June, they opened an office in Ballard Pier, naming it ‘Bombay International Consultancy’, the police officer said.

But, after the victims started visiting the office to complain of fake visas, they shut the office on September 18 and opened another one in Sahar, Andheri East, on October 10, he said, adding it was called ‘Indian Overseas Placement Service’.

In the first week of November, some of the victims found their visas bogus and approached the MRA Marg police. A case was registered under section 120 (B) (conspiracy), 420 (cheating and dishonestly inducing delivery of property), 465 (punishment for forgery), 467 (forgery of a valuable security), 468 (forgery for purpose of cheating), and 471 (whoever fraudulently or dishonestly uses as genuine documents) of the Indian Penal Code and sections of the Information Technology Act. The investigation was transferred to the crime branch unit 5.

A crime branch team raided the Andheri office and arrested five people identified as Ramkripal Ramsevak Kushwaha, 45, who lives in Bhiwandi, Rohit Maheshwar Prasad Sinha, 33, a resident of Mumbai, Ashish Kumar Mungeshwar Mahato, 30, from Delhi, Amitosh Shravankumar Gupta, 40, from Lucknow, and Rahul Kumar Shivan Chaudhary, 22, from Gaya in Bihar.

As many as 63 passports, seven forged visas for Azerbaijan, stickers and other documents, five computers and other equipment, a colour printer, five landline phones, seven mobile phones, an internet connection, router, 14 SIM cards, 10 debit cards, cheque books, passbooks, and several letterheads of the firm were seized.

During investigation, the police found that the accused had committed two similar offences in Delhi and Sinha was released from a Delhi prison on bail on September 2 in connection with one of the cases.

Two other suspects wanted in the Mumbai case are still in the Delhi prison, police inspector Nair said.