Three arrested for duping investors in Delhi, Mumbai

Sandeep Shukla, a resident of Azamgarh district of Uttar Pradesh, his brother Manoj Shukla and friend Surendra Batho were arrested following a complaint by a woman who had invested around Rs 20 lakh in their companies for setting up a call centre, police said.

Police arrested the three when they were trying to escape in a car and recovered Rs two lakh in cash and jewellery worth Rs 40 lakh from them.

According to police, the three had floated Max Star Infotech Pvt Ltd and Bhartico Infomedia in 2010 in Delhi and allegedly lured investors on the pretext of providing call centre's franchise with high lucrative returns.

The complainant woman, Sumitra Kumari, had invested Rs 3.75 lakh and Rs 16.08 lakh in both the companies following their assurance that she would get handsome returns and that the call centre would be set up at the location suggested by her, said P Karunakaran, DCP North West District.

During investigations, it was also revealed that the two brothers had earlier floated companies in the name of Aurum Reality, Bristol Developers and Yescube Infrastructure Pvt Ltd in Mumbai and cheated hundreds of investors there.

About 155 persons were cheated of more than Rs 10 crores by the representatives of the Max Star Infotech Pvt Ltd and Bhartico Infomedia using same modus operandi.

After getting their custody, police recovered Rs 1,19,400 in cash, gold and diamond jewellery, two laptops, a CPU and six vehicles in the raids conducted on their instance.

During interrogation, Shukla confessed to have cheated a number of persons in Mumbai and then he came to Delhi and started doing business here at various places.