Engineer, aides who duped 200 arrested

Police recovered from them 148 passports of the people whom the gang had cheated and a sedan bought with the money.

Delhi police have arrested a mechanical engineer from Punjab and his three associates, including two women, who allegedly cheated more than 200 people up to a tune of Rs70 lakh on the pretext of getting them a job in foreign countries.

Delhi police have arrested a mechanical engineer from Punjab and his three associates, including two women, who allegedly cheated more than 200 people up to a tune of Rs70 lakh on the pretext of getting them a job in foreign countries.

Police recovered from them 148 passports of the people whom the gang had cheated and a sedan bought with the money.

The engineer who was arrested was identified as 22-year-old Ishpreet Singh alias Karan, a resident of Patiala in Punjab.

Police said Singh holds a diploma in mechanical engineering from a college in Patiala. He came to Delhi in 2016 and started working with a consultancy firm and later he opened his own office to dupe people.

Singh‘s three associates were identified as Karan Kumar (28), Palak Sachdeva (22) and Akansha (22), police said.

Deputy commissioner of police (west) Monika Bhardwaj said that in January this year, they received a complaint from one Vijay Kumar from Sikar in Rajasthan who alleged that he had contacted an immigration services office in Delhi’s Janakpuri for a job in Canada after spotting an advertisement online.

The complainant told the police that he paid R 1.25 lakh to the agency but the officials fled with his money and passport.

“Initially our team focused on the complainant’s call records. Following surveillance and after scanning dossiers of criminals with similar modus operandi, we found that the criminals fled to Punjab,” Bhardwaj said.

The DCP said, raids were conducted in several areas of Punjab and finally all the four suspects were arrested from Zirakpur in Punjab on Wednesday.

At their instance, 148 passports of the people they had cheated, a Hyundai Verna car purchased with the money, 13 mobile phones used to call and lure people and 35 SIM cards were recovered,” Bhardwaj said.

Police said efforts to arrest another associate of the gang who is still absconding are under way.