Two arrested over tower installation fraud, duped of nearly Rs 50 cr

Kolkata: Two persons have been arrested for allegedly duping a large number of people in the name of a renowned mobile service provider over installation of network towers. The accused persons identified as Avijit Bishnu and Priyanka Kar are staff of admin in the racket. Previously, the sleuths have arrested 11 persons in this case.

According to the investigators, 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.

The target was people from the rural belt of Bengal. They used to contact and lure customers. Money was being taken 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 having their head office at Habra, North 24-Parganas and other offices at Salt Lake Sector V.

After receiving the payments, all sorts of communication was cut off. Sources informed that the amount is feared to have gone up to

Rs 50 crore.