Delhi: Police bust fraud call centre offering jobs in airlines

New Delhi: Police on Sunday said they have busted a fraud call centre and arrested its two owners for allegedly duping hundreds of job aspirants from different states by promising them employment in a private airline

New Delhi: Police on Sunday said they have busted a fraud call centre and arrested its two owners for allegedly duping hundreds of job aspirants from different states by promising them employment in a private airline. Ten people who were working as tele-callers in the call centre were “bound down” that means they have been booked in the case and directed to remain available for investigation, whenever required.

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Deputy commissioner of police (east) Priyanka Kashyap said that some days ago, the district’s cyber cell received a complaint from IndiGo airline that some people were running a racket in the name of providing jobs in the airline at various airports in India. The cheats were also issuing fake appointment letters on the company’s behalf. Accordingly, a case was registered and investigation was taken up.

The cyber cell team investigation showed that the job racket was being run through a call centre operating from a rented building in Ghazipur village. A raid was conducted and 12 people were caught.

“We arrested the two owners, Surjeet Yadav and Sundaram Gupta, while the 10 tele-callers, including eight women, were bound down. Six computers, 16 cellphones, one laptop and other electronic devices used for running the call centre were seized along with ₹26,000 cash,” said DCP Kashyap.

During the interrogation, the DCP said, the arrested men said that they mostly cheated job aspirants from south India, Bihar, Uttar Pradesh and Uttarakhand. The tele-callers were hired on a monthly payment of ₹6,000 to ₹9,000. The mastermind posted advertisements on job portals, inviting applications from job seekers interested in working in IndiGo.

“After obtaining details of the candidates, the racketeers used to take their online interviews. Thereafter, they tricked the candidates into paying the processing fee, which is between ₹1,500 and ₹30,000, in their bank accounts. Further, they issued fake appointment letters. The candidates found themselves cheated when they visited the airline office and learnt that the appointments were fake,” said an investigator.

DCP Kashyap said the arrested frauds have cheated hundreds of job aspirants to the tune of over ₹10 lakh in the past couple of months.

In a statement, IndiGo said it has been regularly alerting people against such fraud practices. “IndiGo has been continuously working towards creating awareness through advisories and regular informercials around such fake job offers by criminals. Our strong belief in handling the issue with a combination of police action as well as awareness has resulted in apprehension of these miscreants today,” said the statement issued by Raj Raghavan, senior vice president: human resources