Representative image of fraud.
Credit: iStock Photo
Mumbai: In a major breakthrough, the Mumbai-headquartered Western Railway (WR) busted a fake recruitment racket under which an accused had allegedly defrauded as many as 300 candidates to the tune of a whopping Rs 21 crore through false job promises.
The operation was carried out by the WR’s vigilance team.
The team had been chasing this fake racket for three months and the breakthrough came over the weekend.
WR’s chief spokesperson Sumit Thakur said a trap was set to nab the culprit with the help of an outsider and two proxy candidates, in which Rs 20,000 was transferred to the culprit through Google Pay.
“It was planned to meet the culprit at Mumbai Central station for payment of further instalment. At around 14:00 hours on 2 February, 2024, he was finally nabbed at the porch of Mumbai Central Station,” he said.
The WR investigations have revealed that the accused had collected Rs 9-10 lakh per candidate. The accused was allegedly making fake documents with the help of a Kolkata-based person.
“A total of 180 blocked numbers were found in his smart phone, probably those were the people who had given huge amounts to get a job in Railways. The team detected about 120 chats of the persons demanding their money ranging from Rs 5-8 lakh which were given to him for getting government jobs,” he said.
All the fake documents, chats and videos of recruited staff have been recovered.
The WR vigilance team handed over the accused to the Government Reserve Police at Mumbai Central, which is carrying out further investigations.
An FIR has been registered against the accused under section 420, 465, 468, 470 and 471 of Indian Penal Code.