Youths duped of lakhs over fake railway jobs

NEW DELHI: A group of youths, who believed they were officers with Indian Railways, realised they were duped over the past few months when they reached the railway headquarters to collect their confirmation letter.

Each of them had paid Rs 10 lakh for the training at an institute, appeared for a recruitment exam and were even paid a stipend of Rs 8,500 for three months — all of which turned out to be a part of a plan by a gang of fraudsters led by a former air-hostess in Mahipalpur

Joint commissioner (crime) Alok Kumar said a case was registered with the Crime Branch and four members of the gang — Amit Pal, Manoj, Dinesh and Jitender —were caught. Efforts are being made to track the woman, Priyanka. Their sixth associate, Kuldeep, was already arrested earlier.

“We have identified all the gang members and an effort is being made to trace Priyanka at the earliest. She had taken the largest share of the money and had even bought properties and assets with it,” said Alok Kumar.

One of victims Chhattis in the complaint said Priyanka had got in touch with him through a relative and promised to get him a job with the railways. She introduced him to Amit Pal, who ran an agency Green Tree Aviation. Chhattis also introduced some of his friends to them, who were given similar offers.

Police have so far found 14 victims and are looking for the rest from the records of the agency. Three of them were offered jobs at a government bank. Pal and Priyanka used to convince the victim to pay Rs 7-10 lakh each, depending on the job.

Police said Kuldeep, had also contacted a website designer in Kolkata, who had designed a fake website of the Indian Railways for them. After a few days, the victims were made to appear for an exam whose results were displayed on the website.

Chhattis said they did the “job” for three months and had then approached the railways for a confirmation when they realised that the whole exercise was fake. Police suspect the role of some railway employees who had given them access to the railway premises.