By OUR STAFF REPORTER
DEHRADUN, 27 Jul: Another big fake call centre was busted in Dehradun today. In fact it is the third such fake call centre that has been busted in past few weeks in Dehradun which seems to have become a hotbed for nefarious activities done under the pretext of call centre. Uttarakhand STF today raided this fake call centre operating from Vasant Vihar. So far, the team has arrested two people from the call centre, while one of their accomplices managed to flee. The accused used to entice people on the pretext of providing loan only at only 1 percent rate of interest and 50 percent subsidy on loan under one alleged Prime Minister’s scheme. Along with this, they also cheated a number of people by charging money for installing mobile towers on their land allegedly at a very high rent. They also cheated people by promising them different types of work from home jobs. In the name of registration and insurance, service tax, security money, 40 to 50 thousand rupees were cheated from a person at different times in the name of registration and insurance. CO Ankush Mishra who led the STF operation informed that a text bulk message from Delhi used to be sent to several thousand people in different states. When the aggrieved person called on the given numbers, fake loan documents were made and sent to them. Under the guise of these documents, for the first time in the name of registration, Rs 600 to Rs 1000, then in the name of insurance, 10 to 15 thousand rupees and in the name of tax service around 10 thousand rupees, then 10 to 15 rupees in the name of security money were charged from them. Thousands of rupees are deposited in a fake account. The customers were asked to wait for ten days to get the loans processed. Following which the customers’ mobile numbers were either blocked or the called number was permanently switched off.
This fake call centre was running in the upper floor of BFC restaurant near Anurag Chowk in Thana Vasant Vihar. Names of the accused are Deepak Raj Sharma, son of Ram Lok Sharma resident of Chiddarpatti Sultanpur; Vikas alias Ram Bhajan, son of Umesh Sharma and resident of, Jidhar Bhatti Sultanpur, Sohit son of, unknown and resident of Dhampur but Sohit managed to flee. At the same time, more than a dozen girls also managed to flee after getting information about the raid, leaving their belongings in the alleged call centre itself. The team has recovered dozens of desktops, two laptops, about two dozen mobiles, dozens of different SIMs used for calling, lakhs of mobile numbers of individuals from different states of the country, registers keeping accounts.
It may be recalled that earlier, on 21 July, Uttarakhand STF had exposed a fake international call centre named ‘A to Z Solutions’ also operating from Dehradun itself. These call centres were cheating people abroad by sitting in Dehradun in the name of service of Microsoft company. In the initial investigation, as the matter appeared to be related to hawala and money laundering, the STF has also sent the report of this entire matter to the Enforcement Directorate (ED) and other central agencies as well.
