Three persons including two Assistant Managers of Thomas Cook (India) Ltd (TCIL) were arrested by the Delhi Police at Connaught Place for reportedly staging a fake robbery and misappropriating foreign currency amounting to Rs 2.22 core. The accused have been identified as Sumit Kumar, Rohit Kumar and Rahul Verma, said police on Tuesday. Sumit, the mastermind, cooked up a story that he was robbed of the currency and was thrown at an isolated spot in Noida. However, an officer privy to the investigation revealed that Sumit changed buses to reach Noida Sector 62. There, he approached the cops and informed his senior.
According to the senior police officers, Sumit and Rohit worked with TCIL, which is in a business of arranging domestic and international tours and to provide travel related services to its customers including foreign exchange, booking of hotels, airline and railways.
To make easy money, Sumit and Rohit along with Rahul hatched a plan to stage a false robbery. However, cops became suspicious when Sumit’s version did not corroborate with his location traced from his call records. Police have recovered the entire amount on Sumit’s instance which was kept at Rahul’s house in Palam Colony. According to the police, the General Manager of TCIL complained that on July 11, at around 9.30 am, Sumit was handed over Rs 2.22 crore worth Foreign Currency at the company’s Indira Gandhi International Airport T3 branch and was asked to carry it to the company’s Connaught Place branch.
“An hour after Sumit left for the CP office, his phone was found to be switched off. Neither the CP branch nor Sumit’s family was aware of his exact whereabouts. The Airport Police was also informed of the same by 2 pm. However, an hour later, the GM got a call from Sumit that he has been allegedly kidnapped and robbed of Rs 2.22 crore,” said a senior cop.
An investigating officer said that during probe, cops found a gaping hole in Sumit’s version. While he alleged that he was robbed and left at Noida, police found through technical surveillance that he was at CP. Extensively interrogated, Sumit confessed that he met Rahul and Rohit at CP. Here he gave the currency to them, who drove off and hid it at a neighbouring spot in Palam Colony.