Four men were arrested for allegedly duping about 500 people on the pretext of securing them jobs in Gulf countries at handsome salaries, police said on Saturday.
The mastermind of the operation was identified as Rohit Sinha, 36, a science graduate and a resident of west Delhi’s Mangolpuri, police said.
The other three were Birendra Singh, 39, Rajman Kushwaha, 33, and Ravindra Singh, 39, all residents of Deoria district in Uttar Pradesh, they said.
The accused posted ads on social media regarding job placements in foreign countries and charged Rs 60,000 to Rs 80,000 for work visas in several gulf countries and also Turkey. A total of 377 Indian passports and six mobile phones were recovered from their possession, police said.
They mainly targeted poor people from eastern UP and Bihar and cheated over 500 people in the last two years, police said.
The matter was reported to one of the victims of the fraud, who had applied for a work visa for Turkey after seeing an ad on Facebook, a senior police officer said.
The complainant, along with his friends, visited an office in north’s Delhi’s Netaji Subhash Place area and enquired about the expenses for a work visa to Turkey.
A deal was struck at Rs 2,50,000 for five people and they all submitted their passports with the accused and paid them the money at their NSP office, the officer said.
Later, when they called to check on the process, they found the accused were unreachable, and when they visited their NSP office, they found it shut, police said.
On the basis of the complaint, police investigated the matter and tracked one of the men, Rohit Sinha, to Mangolpuri and nabbed him, Deputy Commissioner of Police (northwest) Jitendra Meena said.
Sinha revealed that he, along with his associates, cheated several people who were eager to go abroad for a job. They first opened an office at NSP and vacated it after cheating over 200 people, the DCP said.
After that, they shifted their base to Uttam Nagar. At his instance, police arrested the three others.
Three of the four accused have experience of working in Gulf countries for two to five years. They returned to India between 2020 and 2021, the DCP said.
Sinha worked in Mumbai for three to four years and learned about the details of the fraud there. (PTI)
