Rachakonda police busted a pan-India call centre racket and arrested nine accused. Property worth an estimated ₹20 lakh and ₹1.62 lakh in cash were seized.
The accused are Uttam Kumar Yadav (21), the mastermind who has been setting up similar call centres in Kolkata, after coordinating with others in Jharkhand and Bihar. The other accused are Mudavath Ramesh (31), in-charge of a Telugu call centre and a close aide of Uttam. The other accused are Jarupula Shankar (34), a tele-caller who Ramesh recruited, Katravath Ramchander (32), Lavudya Raju (19), Mukesh Kumar (30), Orse Chandu (22), and Gadhe Srisailam (24).
Police were acting on a complaint by Keloth Kishan who stated that he bought a sewing machine from online platform Naaptol which he received in three days. A few days later, he got a package from Naaptol Online Shopping Pvt. Ltd. with a scratch card and phone number with instructions to call. The scratch card showed that he won a Mahindra XUV worth over ₹8 lakh. When he called the number, the person on the other end confirmed that he had indeed won the car. He was asked to send ₹48,200 as delivery charges to bank accounts. It was after the accused insisted that he deposit more money that Mr.Kishan realised he was being cheated.
Police launched an investigation and found that Uttam, who hails from Bihar, along with others, was running fake call centres in Bihar, Jharkhand, West Bengal and Mumbai. They were cheating unsuspecting people on the pretext of providing loans, jobs, gifts, and redeeming credit card reward points, and had been collecting information about their victims from data providers.
Police said the accused sent letters with scratch cards to customers of Naaptol, Shopclues, Flipkart and other popular e-commerce companies and informed them that they had “won” cars or a lottery. They then cheated the victims of their money.
