7 held for duping 1,000 people by promising AAI jobs

Seven people, including four women, were arrested for allegedly duping around 1,000 people to the tune of Rs 2.5 crore on the pretext of providing them jobs in the Airports Authority of India (AAI), police said on Friday.

They were arrested on a complaint filed on July 14, in which a man said he had been duped of over Rs 50,000 by some people who promised to get him a job at the AAI, a senior police officer said.

The complainant said on July 5, he saw an advertisement in a newspaper regarding jobs in AAI and contacted the accused.

He said a woman responded to his call and assured him that he would get a job at the IGI airport in Delhi on a monthly salary of Rs 40,000.

The AAI, which is under the Civil Aviation Ministry, owns and manages around 125 airports across the country.

The complainant was asked to deposit Rs 1,500 in a bank account for registration. Later, he was asked to deposit Rs 14,000 and Rs 35,000 for an agreement with the AAI and as premium against mandatory employee insurance, the officer said.

On enquiring with the AAI, the man found that no such advertisement was issued by the airport authority, police said.

Those arrested are Chander Shekhar (49), Jitender Arya (26), Baldev Raj (55), Beena Rani (28), Rinki (23), Versha Kumari (22) and Bhavna, all residents of Delhi, they said.

Shekhar was the head of the gang and Arya is his nephew. The gang has duped around 1,000 people to the tune of Rs 2.5 crore, police said.

During the investigation, it was found that the gang had used fake documents to get mobile phone numbers and open the bank account, they said.

Shekhar and Arya were arrested on Wednesday after police examined withdrawal details of ATMs, Deputy Commissioner of Police (IGI Airport) Sanjay Bhatia said.

On their instance, their office Sai Enterprise in Naraina area was raided and five more persons, including four women, were arrested on Thursday, he said.

During the investigation it was learnt that Shekhar had hired Baldev and four women to run a call centre, the officer said.

Shekhar, who was the mastermind, wanted to build a house and to gather money, he started duping people, police said.

Members of the gang had contacted more than 20,000 people in the past one year and out of these, around 1,000 people became victims, they said.

The accused used to give advertisements of jobs in the name of the AAI in various newspapers every month. They mentioned that there would be no interview and people would be employed through direct recruitment with a salary from Rs 19,500 to Rs 75,500, DCP Bhatia said.

When the victims contacted them, they assured them a job and asked them to deposit money in bank accounts at regular intervals, police said.

A laptop, Rs 2.92 lakh, eight mobile phones and an ATM card were recovered from them, they added.