Installation of phone towers: 8 arrested for duping people

KOLKATA: Bidhannagar Police arrested eight persons, including six women, on Thursday for allegedly cheating people on the pretext of installing mobile phone’s towers of a leading mobile service provider.

According to sources, on Thursday evening a joint raid was conducted by the cops Bidhannagar Police Detective Department and Electronics Complex police station at a service centre of cars located on the ground floor of DN-2 building in Salt Lake Sector V. The service centre offers door-to-door washing and maintenance services for cars. While working, the employees of the said service centre used to offer lucrative returns if the customers allowed them to install mobile phone’s tower at their land.

If any person agrees to install a mobile phone’s tower the accused person would then ask for documents along with a good amount of money as registration charge. After a few days the accused persons used to ask for more money under multiple heads like processing charges, miscellaneous charges etc. After getting the money the accused persons used to stop communicating.

During the probe, cops found that the fraudulent activities were being carried out from the said service centre which was also used as a call centre.

However, the accused persons had no permission or authorisation to run a call centre. From the call centre, police seized 13 mobile phones, three Point of Sell (PoS) machines along with a large number of forged documents.