A senior official in the Karnataka Industrial Areas Development Board (KIADB) fell for a gang masquerading as Lokayukta police and paid them Rs 1 lakh to “avoid being raided” by anti-corruption sleuths.
Asha Bharath, a joint director in the KIADB, recently received a phone call from an unknown number. The caller posed as a Lokayukta police officer and warned that they were preparing to raid and trap her in a corruption case. The caller demanded money to prevent the raid.
The official fell for the trick and paid them Rs 1 lakh. She thought the matter ended there but it didn’t. The caller contacted her again and demanded more money. She suspected that they were fraudsters and filed a police complaint.
Police opened an investigation and tracked down a three-member gang by tracking mobile phone network data. The mastermind, however, remains elusive.
One of the suspects, Nageshwar Reddy Uppaloor, 33, is a former railway employee. The other two are Buchupalli Vineeth Kumar Reddy, 22, and Shivakumar Reddy Pandilla Larli, 19. All are from Andhra Pradesh. Srinath Reddy, the alleged kingpin, is at large, police said.
Police seized five mobile phones from them.
After quitting his railway job, Uppaloor joined the PSU, Uranium Corporation of India. He left that job, too, and started a career conning people.
He initially made money by cheating people through travel bookings. He faced nine cases and was arrested. He was also accused of ATM frauds.
The gang took a list of government officials from different websites and decided to cheat them. The officials were contacted on their official phone numbers.
Published 30 March 2023, 21:45 IST