GURUGRAM: A day after a sham call centre cheating American citizens was busted in Gurugram, the company named by police in the FIR claimed it had no connection with the perpetrators of the fraud and had been wrongly dragged into the case.
Alethe Consulting Pvt Ltd, which operates out of the same Info City 2 building as the sham call centre did, also said on Wednesday it had initiated a legal action to remove the company’s name from the FIR. The building was raided on Monday night and three people, two of them BTech graduates, were arrested for running an operation that embezzled money from US citizens by threatening them with tax-evasion notices.
Officials at Alethe, which is an IT services company, said they were shocked to see their name in the FIR. “Only after the police raid did we come to know about the fraudulent operation being conducted on the first and second floor of our building in the night time. Till the police raid, we had no idea or information about their operations and people associated with it. Even their timings were different and none of our employees had any interaction with people working on the first and second floors,” said
Balwan Singh, vice-president (administration) of Alethe. Alethe operates from the basement and first floor of the Sector 33 building. Singh said they had provided footage from the camera installed at the entry gate to the police to help with the investigation.
Asked why Alethe was named in the FIR, filed under IPC sections 419 and 420 (cheating) and the IT Act, a senior police official admitted it was found during investigation that Alethe and the bogus call centre were separate entities operating from different floors of the building. “The companies have no connection,” said a senior police official. “The call centre was a faceless entity so we named the company which has put its name plate on the building as a reference point.”
Alethe officials said they had been operating out of the building for the last four years, while the bogus call centre had moved in around 7-8 months ago. Ritu
Rao, director of Alethe, said they were saddened about their name being dragged into this. “Four highly qualified people with a technical background came together to start a company in 2010 with bootstrap resources. We slogged for years and worked with government agencies and programmes like Digital India, Delhi Police, Make in India, Aadhaar and other large assignments with private and government agencies to create a niche for us in digital and information technology sector,” said Rao, adding it took years to build the company but a small mistake could spoil that in a day. She also said they expected the government and police to make necessary corrections in the FIR so that they don’t face any further problems.
Alethe officials said they were not into the call centre business. “We help customers in doing accelerated business and technology transformation to reduce total cost of ownership for their IT infrastructure,” said an official.
Ritu Rao also urged police to take stringent action against bogus companies “because they create a negative image of the IT industry and people like us who have created our own brand from scratch with dedication and hard work.” Rao said the government should come up with a mechanism to put a check on such operations and companies and land owners should verify the authenticity of a company and profile of the people associated with it before renting premises out. “It does not just create a bad name for the country, it also affects the work and image of real and honest companies working in the field of IT,” said Rao.
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