new delhi: A car with a blue beacon, a posh hotel room and the Central government's Make in India initiative were all it took for a private company here and two fraudsters to impersonate government officials and defraud a Delhi-based businessman of Rs 20 crore.
The Economic Offences Wing of the Delhi Police has now registered a case in the matter. According to one official, the complainant met the suspects in a posh hotel in 2014, following which one of the suspects introduced himself as an IFS officer posted in the Prime Minister's Office.
The complainant told police that the suspects usually came to the hotel in a Honda City with blue flashing beacons on its roof. "They claimed that there are several opportunities of growth and they will be instrumental in government scheme in the process of engaging the companies for promoting the scheme of Make in India," the complainant said.
The suspects then said that since one of them was a PMO staffer, they could easily procure contracts under the Make in India initiative for the complainant's company, provided he pay them some amount of money. As per the FIR, both suspects then asked the directors of the complainant's company to buy infrastructure technology from a private company as they were in the process of getting the government contract.
The complainant said the suspects also showed him a letter of intent on their mobile phone, claiming it was issued by the DIPP, Udyog Bhawan, in favour of his company. Confident that the process of getting the contract had been initiated, the complainant then paid Rs 20 crore into the account of the private company that the suspects had mentioned.
However, when the complainant later tried to contact the suspects, wondering why his company was not assigned the contract, the suspects said it would take more time. Suspicious, the complainant, through an RTI inquiry found that the suspect who claimed to be a government official did not work in the PMO and that there was no such company as the one that the suspects claimed.