US national, techie booked for ‘cheating’ firm owner

Noida: A city-based software firm owner, who was booked for fraud by Sector 20 police in November last year on a complaint by a US-based client and a Ghaziabad-based techie, has alleged he was actually framed by the duo in collusion with a police officer and a local reporter.
A new FIR has been lodged at Sector 20 police station against the US national Phil Alape and techie Vivek Akhil under IPC sections 420 (cheating), 406 (criminal breach of trust), 408 (criminal breach of trust by clerk or servant), 419 (punishment for cheating by personation), 500 (defamation), 426 (mischief) and 120b (criminal conspiracy). Interestingly, there’s no mention of any police officer or reporter in the FIR.

According to Himanshu Khatri, owner of Mentis Consulting, it was in fact Alape who owed his firm nearly $2 million. Alape, who also owns a software firm in the US, was not settling the dues and he conspired with Mentis’ former employee Vivek “and victimised me for repeatedly demanding the dues”. “And from the day, the FIR was lodged against me, Alape, Vivek, a reporter and a police officer had been creating undue pressure on me to settle the business dispute by money,” reads the new FIR.

Himanshu has also alleged that he had lodged a complaint against Vivek and two other employess, Rana Ranjan and Raish Ansari, in January 2016 for data theft. “In Mentis, Vivek headed all operations for Alape’s company from 2006-2015. He resigned from Mentis in March 2015 to start his own venture and in October that year started poaching my employees and got confidential details of Alape’s firm from them. Subsequently, Alape’s firm too decided to end its association with Mentis in 2015 and decided to work with Vivek’s newly formed company Web Mind Infotech,” the new FIR reads. Asked if the reporter could be any of the three already in jail after being caught in the Operation trap on January 31, SSP Vaibhav Krishna did not deny the possibility. He also said that Alape could be summoned through court keeping the external affairs ministry in the loop.