Itanagar: The Special Investigation Team (SIT) of Arunachal Pradesh Police has arrested a husband-and-wife duo for allegedly duping unemployed youths by posting fake job advertisements online for the Donyi Polo Airport in Itanagar.
The accused have been identified as Subhasish Mistri (26) and Mampi Banerjee and are natives of North 24 Parganas in West Bengal.
According to police, the duo has confessed to have cheated over 100 unemployed youths with the promise of securing jobs at the airport and looted around Rs 10 lakh from them.
SIT superintendent of police Rohit Rajbir Singh said the arrests were made following a written complaint received from one Surjyaditya Banerjee, a resident of A-Sector, Itanagar.
Case details:
The complainant in his letter had stated that he had come across an airport job advertisement on Facebook somewhere in the month of September 2022 and applied for the same.
He (complainant) then contacted one unknown lady over the phone and followed the procedure as directed and eventually got cheated by them.
“The complainant had paid a total amount of Rs. 20775/- into their account on various dates through UPI and in return received an appointment letter and various documents which were later found to be fake. A case under section 420/468/471 of the IPC read with Section 66D IT Act was accordingly registered and an investigation was taken up,” SP Singh said.
The SP said upon careful perusal of the social media linkages of the fraudulent posters, it was realized that the fake appointments were a well-thought-out and executed scam with inter-state linkages.
A team led by inspector Path Nikang and assisted by head constable G L Ray, constables Gautam Barman, C Chakap and lady constable Leena Tallong was formed to tackle the case. The team was guided by SIT officer-in-charge N Lali and deputy SP M Basar Kamdak.
“The team, through intensive surveillance and social media investigation was able to zero down on Subhasish as the mastermind behind the offence. He was subsequently arrested on December 07 from West Bengal,” SP Singh said, while adding that his wife Mampi has also been arrested for the offence.
Upon interrogation, it was revealed that the accused formerly used to work in a Business Process Outsourcing (BPO) company in Kolkata and during peer-interactions he got the idea of running a fraudulent campaign for recruitment purposes in the month of September 2021.
Subhasish then made an airport job advertisement and posted it on Facebook in the month of October-November 2021 mentioning his mobile no for queries. He also downloaded the seal of the Arunachal Pradesh Legislative Assembly and signatures from the internet. After some days, many applicants started to send their documents on his WhatsApp number. After that, he asked them to deposit money for the uniform fees and logistics, Singh said.
Three mobile phones and 4 sim cards used for the commission of offence and several fraudulent documents have been recovered from the accused, the SP added.
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