Nine held for duping businessman of Rs 7 lakh

Nine persons, including a homeopathy doctor, were arrested here on Friday for allegedly duping a city-based businessman of Rs 7 lakh on the false promise of getting Rs 25 crore funds for his NGO from abroad, police said.

All the accused were arrested from a hotel here and Rs 1 lakh cash as well as nine mobile phones were recovered from them, police said.

The complainant in the case, businessman Tanveer Singh Saluja, had come in contact with one of the accused, Dr Homnath Thakur, a homeopath, on September 20, Additional Superintendent of Police (city) Rajesh Kumar Tripathi said.

"Thakur promised Saluja that he could get Rs 25 crore funds for his NGO from abroad under the social corporate responsibility (CSR). He told Saluja that as a prerequisite, he will have to show that he possesses assets worth Rs 15 crore," he said.

Thakur then demanded Rs 7 lakh from the complainant for making payment to the foreign-based private company in order to get funds from it, the officer said.

"The complainant gave Rs 5 lakh cash to Thakur and told him that he would give the remaining amount to the company during a meeting with its officials," he said.

On October 8, Thakur told the businessman that the company officials had arrived in the city for a meeting. Next day the complainant met three persons, who posed as executives of the company, at a hotel and handed over to them Rs 2 lakh cash, Tripathi said.

"During the meeting, Saluja sought Aadhaar card details from Rajeev Dev, one of the accused. He also demanded detailed information about the company that was supposed to provide fundsy to him. However, Dev refused to provide these details," the ASP said.

Suspecting that he has been cheated, Saluja lodged a complaint with Garha police station on Thursday.

Based on the complaint, police arrested Thakur, 39, a resident of Jabalpur and Dev, 48, who is from Sonitpur in Assam, from the hotel on Friday.

The other arrested were identified as Ajendra Singh Rathore (38) of Jabalpur, Ranjeet Singh Tomar (64) of Lucknow (UP), Vipin Sijjal (60) and Pratap Narayan Garg (55) of Agra (UP), Ashish Kumar Porwal (32) and Umesh Kumar Verma (39) of Kanpur (UP) and Basira Ibrahim of Sabarkantha (Gujarat).

A case under IPC sections 420 (cheating) and 120 (B) (criminal conspiracy) against them, the ASP said.