Beverage co officials held for involvement in lottery racket

The West Bengal CID has arrested two top officials of a beverage-manufacturing company for their alleged involvement with a Pakistan-based racket that conned people with fake lottery schemes, a senior officer of the agency said Sunday.

Acting on a suo motu case registered at Egra police station in East Midnapore district on January 13, the Criminal Investigation Department (CID) found out that the racket had been duping people in the state as well other parts of the country, he said.

Two officials of Pran Beverages (India) Private Ltd - director Rajesh Ghosh and sales administration manager Bidhan Kirtaniya - were arrested Saturday night after they were found to have received money from the racket, he told PTI.

The duo were produced at Contai court, which remanded them to police custody, the officer said.

"The officials were apprehended under several relevant sections of the IPC and section 66 (D) of the IT Act. Necessary searches have been conducted and documents seized from the residential premises of the two accused and the head office of the beverage company at Chinar Park, New Town," he said.

Sharing the modus operandi of the racket, the CID officer said that the money collected from people were sent to Pakistan through hawala channels.

"The racketeers would call up people via phone or Whatsapp from numbers starting with +92 or 0092 to tell them that they won a huge amount of money in lottery, which would be transferred to them on payment of processing fees.

"Once the fees were deposited in the bank account, it was withdrawn by agents here in India. They then sent the money to Pakistan after routing it through Dubai," he explained.

As of now, the department was trying to find out more about the operations of the racket, the officer said.

"It seems to be quite a big racket. We are trying to find out which other states they have (racketeers) been operating from and who all are involved in the process," he added.