Take steps to trace gangs duping people on pretext of loans, lucky draws: HC

PRAYAGRAJ Taking a strong note of suicide of a man who was duped on the pretext of a loan offer, the Allahabad high court directed the UP DGP to take immediate steps to trace out the “widespread racket of hardened criminals,” who are cheating innocent citizens with loan offers, lucky draws and rewards related to TV shows

PRAYAGRAJ Taking a strong note of suicide of a man who was duped on the pretext of a loan offer, the Allahabad high court directed the UP DGP to take immediate steps to trace out the “widespread racket of hardened criminals,” who are cheating innocent citizens with loan offers, lucky draws and rewards related to TV shows.

HT Image

The court also directed the DGP to issue circulars to the district police heads to come down heavily on such cheats.

Justice JJ Munir passed the order while rejecting the bail application of Kuldeep, who was one of the accused in an “abetment of suicide” and cheating case registered at Kutubsher police station in Saharanpur.

As per the prosecution, one of the accused in the case - Sunil Kumar –

introduced himself as an employee of a private finance company to the complainant’s son - Shubham Kumar and offered him a loan of ₹10 lakh to start a business. On the pretext of the loan proposal, Kumar duped him of ₹1 lakh. After being cheated, the complainant’s son went into depression and later committed suicide.

The applicant’s plea was that he had not cheated the deceased and the allegation against him was that he was arrested along with main accused when they were travelling in an SUV and some mobile phones were also recovered from him.

The government counsel argued that such crimes are an organised and widespread phenomenon, where innocent people are psychologically caught in their weak moments to part with money on the pretext of loans or rewards under various schemes. The accused was part of an organized racket, who were duping people of their hard earned money.

“The deceased could not withstand the shock of losing a sum of ₹1 lakh to cheats and frauds and ultimately committed suicide,” argued the government counsel.

The court, after hearing the parties concerned, observed: “Indeed, the act of cheating a person, seemingly by a well organised gang, in times that

are so hard and dear on account of the Covid-19 pandemic, where scores of citizens have lost their jobs, is an enormous crime. It has to be dealt with an iron hand. As far as the applicant is concerned, he has been caught red-handed along with those men, from whose custody mobile phones etc have been recovered, that were employed in perpetrating this fraud.”

While rejecting the bail application, the court observed: “This court feels that it is high time when the state police must take widespread action to immediately bring to book all offenders, who call up citizens and make them cough up money by offering alluring schemes for the provision of loans or TV show rewards or lottery bonanzas. This court is convinced that no case for bail is made out.”