Malkangiri: A fraudster was arrested by a police team from Odisha’s Malkangiri for allegedly duping people of over Rs three under the guise of a trading business.
The arrest was made following a thorough probe based on a complaint filed by K Jitendra Patra of Malkangiri, who claimed to have lost over Rs 1.2 crore in the scam. The accused was identified as Debajit Tripathy, stated to be originally from Bargarh district and operating from different places.
The police team traced Tripathy to Tezpur in Assam, where he was hiding. He was arrested and brought back to Malkangiri, where he has been remanded to judicial custody.
As per Patra’s complaint filed on August 9, 2024, at Malkangiri police station, he first met Tripathy in 2018 and the accused introduced himself as a trader based in Cuttack city.
Tripathy allegedly lured Patra with promises of high returns and told him that an investment of Rs 50,000 would yield a 20% profit within three months. Finding the offer lucrative, Patra initially invested money and received some returns, which brought trust in Tripathy.
After winning Patra’s confidence, Tripathy allegedly convinced him to invest more money and Patra invested around Rs 40 lakh initially. He subsequently made an investment of Rs 80 lakh in several instalments. However, the promised returns never came after that and Tripathy became untraceable.
Realising that he had been defrauded, Patra approached the police. Following the complaint, Malkangiri police launched an investigation and managed to arrest the accused from Assam.
A CPU, two laptops, two chequebooks, a passbook and several bank cheques have been seized from the possession of the accused, a police official said.
Preliminary investigation showed that Tripathy may have similarly defrauded at least five other persons, with the total scam amount crossing Rs 3 crore.
It is suspected that a bigger network is operating under the guise of trading investments targeting gullible people. Investigation is in progress to ascertain the exact shape of the racket and identify others involved in fraud.
