Three frauds from Ahmednagar arrested for trying to cheat LIC

MUMBAI: Two builders and a mechanic from Ahmednagar district were arrested and produced in a city court on Wednesday for allegedly trying to defraud the Life Insurance Corporation (LIC) of India

MUMBAI: Two builders and a mechanic from Ahmednagar district were arrested and produced in a city court on Wednesday for allegedly trying to defraud the Life Insurance Corporation (LIC) of India. According to the Shivaji Park police, one of the accused bought a life insurance policy with a cover of ₹2 crore from the public sector insurance and later tried to claim the insurance amount by creating fake documents and using an unidentified body to show that the policyholder was no more.

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The arrested accused are identified as Dinesh Taaksale, Anil Bhimrao Latke and Vijay Malawade all natives of the Ahmednagar district.

According to police, last month the LIC branch at Gokhale Road in Dadar lodged a complaint with them against Dinesh Taaksale and his mother Nandbai.

The accused had applied for a life insurance policy with cover of ₹8 crore and shown income from farming to the tune of ₹35 lakh a year and a food mess business in Ahmednagar. The LIC, however, had agreed to issue them a policy of ₹2 crore seeing their income as of April 2015.

They had informed the public sector undertaking that on December 25, 2016, Taaksale had died in an accident on Shrigonda Highway in the jurisdiction of Belwandi police station and on that basis applied for the claim money on March 14, 2017 with the LIC, said DCP, Zone V, Manoj Patil.

As the policy was of the higher amount and they applied for a claim soon after taking the policy, the public sector undertaking conducted a detailed inquiry and found several suspicious aspects, like the bank accounts not showing the income shown while applying for the policy, the documents looked suspicious and therefore it approached the police and a case was registered against Dinesh Taaksale and his mother Nandbai, who had applied for the claim, stating Dinesh had died in a road accident.

“We posed as bank officials and visited Dinesh’s house in Pune and found that he was alive and thus everything became clear. We learnt he was alive and worked as a mechanic. Later when we interrogated Taaksale, names of Latke and Malawade came to the fore,” said Akshay Patil, police-sub-inspector of Shivaji Park police station.

Latke and Malawade are small-time builders from Ahmednagar and had suffered huge losses after which they came up with the idea of cheating LIC and involved their friend Taaksale in the conspiracy.

“They had applied for a policy in the name of Taaksale showing inflated income and even paid a few premiums totalling around ₹5 lakh. They then came to know about an unidentified body lying in Shrigonda government hospital in December 2016 and claimed it was Taaksale’s body and obtained a death certificate, which they submitted to LIC for claiming the insurance amount,” said Patil.

“We are also inquiring as to who posed as the mother of Taaksale and approached the LIC, as his real mother has never visited the branch. “ More accused are involved, and investigations are on to locate them,” said Patil.