Man held for cheating people of lakhs in exchange for jobs

Police on Wednesday arrested a man for allegedly cheating people on the pretext of getting them government jobs during the lockdown.

Police on Wednesday arrested a man for allegedly cheating people on the pretext of getting them government jobs during the lockdown.

HT Image

The man, 39-year-old Lucknow resident Chandra Bhushan Pandey allegedly charged his “clients” anywhere between ₹50,000 to ₹1 lakh for his services, but left them jobless in the end, said police.

According to the police, Pandey moved to the city on March 16 and rented a house in sector 31. Police said he published pamphlets offering government jobs and placed advertisements online, where he mentioned that he ran an organisation called ‘Kendriya Krishi Vikas Sansthan’.

A police officer privy to the investigation, requesting anonymity, said, “From one person he charged ₹27,000 a month. Several unemployed men from Rewari, Mahendargarh and Narnaul had come to his office, where he taught them a course on agriculture and took interviews as part of his training module for 45 days.”

Police said the training included courses on opening of credit cards for farmers and micro finance regulations. “The probe revealed that he had cheated several people using a similar modus operandi in Lucknow too and had been running this racket since 2016. In Lucknow, he charged ₹56,680 for the course package, in Gurugram, he was charging over ₹1 lakh. He told several job seekers that he would refund their money if they did not get jobs, but later he kept changing his location,” said the police officer.

Preet Pal, assistant commissioner of police (ACP), crime, said, “A complaint was received from the Department of Agriculture, Cooperation and Farmers Welfare in the Ministry of Agriculture in June, following which a probe was initiated. This week a raid was conducted and the accused was arrested from sector 31. At the time of the raid, police found that six unemployed men were undergoing the training and their statements were recorded.”

Several calls to the office of the administrative vigilance unit of Department of Agriculture, Cooperation and Farmers Welfare, Ministry of Agriculture did not elicit a response.

Police said a laptop, which had details of the all the victims, was recovered during the remand. On Wednesday, the accused man was sent to judicial custody. A case was registered against him under sections 420 (cheating), 467 (forgery of valuable security will etc), 468 (forgery of purpose of cheating) and 471(using as genuine a forged document) of Indian Penal Code at sector 40 police station, said police.