Man, brother-in-law held for duping people on pretext of selling industrial plots

A 32-year-old man and his brother-in-law have been arrested for allegedly duping people on the pretext of selling industrial plots, police said Friday.

The accused were identified as Vikram Saxena (32) and Kapil Marwaha (37), both residents of Tilak Nagar, they said.

According to police, a complainant had applied for two industrial plots from Delhi State Industrial Development Corporation (DSIDC) in 1996. However, his application was not approved and got cancelled.

In April this year, Saxena visited the complainant's office in Kashmere Gate and introduced himself as an employee of DSIDC. He assured the complainant that he can get the two plots allotted from DSIDC at Patparganj Industrial Area, they said.

The accused had taken Rs 11,30,000 from the complainant in several meetings for allotting him plots.

In order to assure himself, the complainant, along with his son, went to the office of DSIDC on June 14 and enquired about the plots on offer and also showed them the receipts given by the accused, police said.

The officials of DSIDC informed that the letters were fake. Thereafter, he approached police and filed a complaint, they said.

"However, when the accused demanded more money from him, a meeting was fixed on Wednesday and both the accused were arrested," said Deputy Commissioner of Police (New Delhi) Madhur Verma.

During interrogation, it was revealed that Saxena was the mastermind of this scam. He opened a fake company Dev Seva Income Development Company (DSIDC) in 2018 in order to dupe people on the pretext of providing industrial plots in Delhi and in other states, they said.

He also came to know that DSIDC had rejected allotment of industrial plots during 1996. He downloaded the rejection list from the website of DSIDC and started contacting applicants, the DCP said.

He involved his brother-in-law Kapil Marwaha and changed Marwaha's name to Manoj Kumar whom he represented as his senior, he said.

After finalising the deal, they used to demand money for service charges, DSIDC charges, and costs of industrial plots, police said, adding that three fake ID cards of DSIDC, two fake letters, nine fake cash receipts and two fake stamps were recovered.