1 held for duping mobile sellers

A man was arrested for allegedly cheating more than 10 mobile sellers of over Rs 2.5 lakh here, police said Friday.

The accused was identified as Azad Malhotra and his real name was revealed as Sunny Sharma, a resident of West Punjabi Bagh, they added.

A person named Harshit Gaur filed a complaint, stating that the accused, Azad Malhotra, had cheated many persons Delhi and National Capital Region by purchasing mobile phones on an e-tailing website.

Instead of making payment in cash he paid via NEFT. To gain confidence of the seller, he used to generate a message regarding initiation of NEFT payment, which gets delivered on the mobile of complainant. After seeing the message, the complainant gave the mobile phone, along with mobile bill. But, the sale amount never got credited to the complainant's account, a senior police officer said.

During investigation, police made a plan and asked the complainant to make a request on e-tailing. After the complainant made a request regarding sale of his mobile, iPhone X, the accused approached him after seeing the message, said Madhur Verma, deputy commissioner of police (New Delhi).

To finalise the deal, the accused called the complainant to a coffee shop at Connaught Place on Thursday, where the police were already present, the DCP said, adding that when Malhotra came there to finalise the deal, he was apprehended.

Later, it came to notice that his original name is Sunny Sharma. Malhotra used to search for sellers on e-tailing sites, who wanted to sell their expensive phones. He fixes a deal with the seller and asked the seller to meet and make a delivery and, instead of making payment in cash, he paid via NEFT online, he said.

His account was in a private bank, where there is a facility that the account holder can schedule his payment and later cancel it if he did not want to transfer the money or payment get automatically cancelled if the account does not have sufficient amount, Verma said.

One smart watch and Rs 24,000 were recovered from his possession, the police added.