2 Nigerians, Manipuri woman held for fraud National level fraud suspected
Source: The Sangai Express / Courtesy TNN
Dehradun, December 28 2015:
Blowing the lid off a major fraud, the Dehradun police arrested two Nigerians and a woman from Manipur, who was married to one of them, for allegedly duping a Doon woman of Rs 20 lakh.
The trio was arrested from New Delhi and produced before a Court in Dehradun on Monday morning.
While police is quizzing the trio, it has not ruled out the possibility of it being a National-level fraud in which people were duped of several crores.
The two Nigerians arrested have been identified as Anthony and Godwin.
However, police suspect that the duo have revealed a "fake" identity as their passports are yet to be found.
The third arrested is Huidrom Sarjubala Devi, who is from Manipur and married to Anthony.
Anthony and Huidrom were presently settled in the Devli extension area of New Delhi.
Anthony and Godwin got the mobile number of Tasmeena Kausar, a resident of Gandhi Road, Dehradun.
The two called her on November 24, 2015 and introduced themselves as Custom Department officers.
The duo claimed that she had a courier for 15 crore Euros from Scotland and as the amount was "very heavy" it had been handed over to Reserve Bank of India.
"Huidrom called Kausar and introduced herself as RBI officer and told her to clear the tax in order to get the 15 crore Euros," SSP Dehradun Sadanand Date told TOI.
Kausar's husband, who had expired some time back, earlier worked in Scotland and had friends there, therefore she came under the impression that the amount had some connection with him.
The first demand was for Rs 65,000 and slowly the amount increased.
"Having fallen into their trap, the woman deposited Rs 20 lakh in about 24 different bank accounts.
Most of these bank accounts were operated from North-East or Delhi," said the SSP.
On December 18, Kausar approached Kotwali police of Dehradun to register her complaint.
Following which a case under section 420 (cheating), 467 (forgery of valuable security, will), 468 (forgery for the purpose of cheating), 471 (using as genuine a forged document or electronic record), 120 (B) (Criminal Conspiracy) was registered against unidentified persons.
"The case was given to joint team of Kotwali and Special Operation Group, and working on the matter they found Delhi connection in the matter.
We approached Delhi police and with their help the three were arrested from Devli extension and DLF mall," said the SSP.
As many as 114 sim cards, four mobile phones, one note pad and a laptop were seized from their possession.
The police is trying to get the remand of the trio to find more details related to this case and other crimes committed by the gang.
"It is still too early to comment on anything but we cannot rule of the possibility of the fraud spread across different parts of the country.
The gang members are professionals and it is unlikely that this was their first crime.
We suspect that they have cheated many people of crores across the country as the bank accounts were being operated from different States," added Date.
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