After evading cops for over year, cheating accused held

Kolkata: A person has been arrested at the Bidhannagar Cyber Crime police station, who is accused in a cheating case and was evading arrest since August last year.

According to police, prime accused person identified as Pankaj Das of Behala set up an office in the name of 'Rage Multi State Credit Co-Operative Society Limited' at Habra in North 24-Parganas and a branch office at Reshmi Building at Sector V in Salt Lake.

He also hired several people as employees. Das was produced before the Bidhannagar Court and has been remanded to five days police custody.

They used to call anonymously to convince people to install network towers within their premises and when the owners were convinced, the accused used to charge them for commencing work.

Police found that they used to target people from the rural belt of Bengal. But in due course of investigation, police found several people from Odisha, Bihar, Assam, Meghalaya, Arunachal Pradesh and Tripura were cheated. It is learnt that the accused made Rs 50 crore by cheating people.

After the target got convinced, alleged cheaters used to demand money in the name registration fees, no objection certificate fee from Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI), including other miscellaneous charges. As payment was to be made through demand drafts, online fund transfer or cheque, excluding cash, nobody had doubted any foul play. Initially, the customers were only told about registration fees.

They also used to promise huge facilities in return to their investments, such as a large amount of money, job for a young person in the family among many other lucrative offers.

After getting the registration fees, the alleged cheaters used to tell the customers about other paid mandatory procedures.

In this way, another Rs 10 lakh was taken from the customers after which they used to provide a fixed deposit certificate in the name of Rage Multi State Credit Co-Operative Society Limited. Later, they used to stop all sorts of communication.