Man held for duping people on pretext of providing bank loans

New Delhi, July 1 () A Ghaziabad resident was arrested for allegedly posing as a bank official and duping a man of Rs 7 lakh on the pretext of granting him loan in southeast Delhi, police said on Wednesday.

The accused, Devender Singh, was nabbed with the help of technical surveillance, they said.

With his arrest, the police have claimed to have recovered two mobile phones, four batteries, seven ATM cards, cheques, cash worth Rs 17,000 and a car.

The accused have cheated several people on the pretext of granting them loans, the police said.

Sanjeev Kumar Gautam, a resident of Jeewan Nagar area here, reported that on June 10, a person named Ashish contacted him through mobile on the behalf of ICICI Bank for giving loan, the police said.

Ashish sent a man named Abhishek to his house to collect the KYC documents. But Gautam asked Abhishek to collect the said documents from his factory in Okhla.

Thereafter, Abhishek collected the said KYC documents along with six cheques of two banks from Gautam's factory.

The next day, when the complainant tried to contact Ashish, his phone was switched off. On being suspicion, he contacted the banks and found that Rs 7 lakh was withdrawn from his accounts via cheques.

Based on his complaint, a case was registered under section of cheating and forgery at the Sun Light Colony police station, Additional Deputy Commissioner of Police (Southeast) Kumar Gyanesh said.

During investigation, footages of around 150 CCTV cameras installed in Jeevan Nagar and Sunlight Colony area were checked and a white Hyundai i-20 car was noticed, the DCP said.

"The ownership of the car was obtained and it was found registered in the name of Devender. The contact number of the accused was collected from the insurance certificate of the car and during technical surveillance, his location was traced to Rajnagar Extention, Ghaziabad," Gyanesh said.

A trap was laid on June 29, and the accused was held from his house, he said.

Interrogation revealed that accused came in contact with Neeraj and Kamal Sharma, both residents of Modi Nagar in UP. They cheated people using fake identity. Devender also joined them and started cheating innocent people on the pretext of granting them loan, the officer said.

The accused admitted that he along with Neeraj and Kamal Sharma had cheated the complainant of Rs 7,00,000 by using fake identity. He received Rs 2,33,000 as his share from the cheated amount and deposited them in different bank accounts, the officer added.

The police said an investigation is in progress and efforts are being made to trace other co-accused. AMP DPB