Berhampur: Police on Monday busted an alleged fake job racket with the arrest of three persons in Odisha’s Ganjam district.
The arrested have been identified as Chinapani Mohan Reddy (48), a resident of Visakhapatnam in Andhra Pradesh and Potanapalli Simanchalam (40) and Tadela Dhilleswara Rao (35), both natives of Srikakulam in Andhra Pradesh.
According to police sources, they allegedly duped job aspirants of lakhs of rupees on the pretext of providing them employment in Kenya. “One Prabhat Dalai filed a complaint at Gosaninuagaon police station on February 5, alleging that Mohan Reddy of Golanthara had taken around Rs 9.70 lakh and 92 passports from as many candidates to give them jobs in Kenya. The process of collecting money began in October last year,” Berhampur SP Saravana Vivek M told a presser.
The accused then demanded Rs 25,000 advance from each candidate to return the original passports. “After 10 days, they were given offer letters of a company. Ten days later, 20 candidates were given tourist visas,” he said.
The 20 candidates gave Rs 48,500 Reddy at a guest house in Gosaninuagaon through UPI payment and cash. “He, however, did not respond when the complainant and other people tried to contact him over telephone for air ticket to Kenya,” the SP said.
Based on Dalai’s complaint, the police registered a case under Sections 420/294 IPC and began an investigation, which revealed that the accused cheated the job aspirants with false assurance to provide them jobs in different countries. They used to collect passports and relevant documents by visiting different locality. However, they duped the aspirants by arranging tourist visas instead of employment visas with the help of their associates.
The trio was nabbed from Visakhapatnam, the SP said.
Besides the passports, applicant’s information, screenshots of financial transactions, and 20 tourist visas issued by The Republic of Kenya were seized from them. The authenticity of the company, which issued offer letters, is also under verification, he added.
