DU law student fakes ministry website, cheats 4,000 job aspirants of Rs 20 lakh

The Delhi University student had created a website that looked like a central government portal calling for job applications. He allegedly managed to cheat so many people in just two days. He had hoped to earn crores from the fraud

A law student from Delhi University who failed to clear the judicial services exam started a website in an attempt to pass it off as one linked to a government ministry and managed to cheat more than 4,000 job applicants of Rs 20 lakh in just two days, police said on Sunday.

The accused, 27-year-old Sumit Kumar, had hoped to earn crores as he expected at least one lakh aspirants to apply for jobs through his website.(Sourced)

An investigator who questioned 27-year-old Sumit Kumar, who was arrested on Saturday, said the LLM student hoped to earn crores within a month as he expected at least one lakh aspirants to apply for jobs through his website.

Kumar was arrested after Delhi Police received a complaint from an undersecretary in the ministry of women and child development (MWCD), said BK Singh, DCP (New Delhi).

The complainant said an unauthorised individual or organisation had set up a “fake” website resembling that of the ministry and was collecting examination fee online by offering jobs for multiple posts. According to the DCP, Kumar had advertised about 6,715 vacancies, most of them for different teaching positions.

The domain name of Kumar’s website, “wcdo.org.in”, appeared similar to WMCD’s original site, “wcd.nic.in”. It even carried the ministry’s logo without permission, said the DCP. “The website carried the government’s helpline numbers for women and children,” the officer said.

The portal (in pic) was designed to imitate the website of ministry of women and child development.

After registering a case at Parliament Street police station, the investigators took a closer look at the website to realise it was registered as an NGO, “Women and Child Development Organisation”. The name was allegedly intended to mislead people into believing it had something to do with the ministry.

An examination of the website provided police vital clues. “The fee payments were to deposited to an ICICI account. We took the details of the account holder from the bank and nabbed the suspect. Initially he tried to mislead us, but admitted on interrogation,” said the DCP.

Kumar allegedly told police he had set up an NGO by getting it registered with the sub-registrar in central Delhi in March. He then sought the help of a web-designer to create the website as per his requirement and then used the ministry’s logo to give it an authentic look.

The DCP said over the past few days, Kumar started advertising the job vacancies and collecting examination fees. The fee for most of the jobs was Rs 800. To make the website appear legitimate, the fee was halved for the scheduled caste and scheduled tribe categories.

“Kumar said his organisation ran no school where he could fill up the said vacancies. He was doing this only to earn money,” said the DCP.

Police are looking out for three other persons: two who had allegedly helped him set up the organisation and a web designer who made the website.