One held in Bihar’s Kaimur for duping people on pretext of jobs

The fraud was detected when a man reached a government school in Kaimur district with a fake appointment letter.

A man who allegedly duped many unemployed youths of lakhs of rupees on the pretext of providing them government jobs was arrested in Kaimur district of southwest Bihar on Sunday.

The man who allegedly duped many unemployed youths in Bihar’s Kaimur district in police custody. (HT photo)

Police said Pardeep Kumar Shrivastava, originally a resident of Ghazipur in neighbouring Uttar Pradesh, was arrested from Mohania, 23 km north of Kaimur district headquarters Bhabua.

Shrivastava claimed to be a doctorate in English and had been running a coaching centre at Shivpuri locality of Mohania town, the police added.

The fraud was detected when a man produced an ‘appointment letter’ for a fourth grade job to the principal of a Jawahar Navoday Vidyalaya at Chaurasia in the district. Principal Anil Kumar Singh, however, did not allow him to join after finding that the ‘appointment letter’, signed by the Kaimur district magistrate, to be fake.

The duped man then met Mohania sub-divisional police officer (SDPO) Manoj Ram and informed him that Shrivastava had taken Rs 3 lakh for the government school job. Many other victims also approached the police during its investigation into the matter. A raid was subsequently conducted on Shrivastava’s coaching centre. Shrivastava was arrested and coaching centre sealed after seals and letter pads of district judge, district magistrate and secretaries of various departments, along with service books, were recovered during the raid.

Superintendent of police Harpreet Kaur said a police team was interrogating Shrivastava. “He will be sent to the jail in the afternoon,” Kaur said.